GAMMA
by cupcakeriot
Summary: When the mutations first emerged, humanity reacted with fear and ignorance, leading extrahumans to divide themselves on ethical lines - but when the gamma ray came, there was never a question about saving the world, only a question of who to save. The fate of six billion lives depends on a single act, on a single kiss, on a single decision of morality. A comicbook love story.
1. Issue No 1: 1

Issue No. 1: THE ORIGINS

"Trying to hold, hold out for now

With these ice caps melting down

With the transistor sound

And my Chevrolet Terra plane

Going round, round, round…"

· Beck

* * *

1.

 **Manhattan, New York - 2194**

Einstein once surmised, quite aptly, that the perception of time is an illusion and that there is no past, present, or future - yet she knows that all things have a beginning, a middle, and an end despite what alternates physics might propose.

This is the beginning. This is the event from which all others depart. This is the catalyst: a headache.

It's an innocuous headache, the sort that can be managed with a single dissolving tablet beneath the tongue that tastes of too-sweet artificial cherries. Bella takes a tablet when the expensive imported Oriental tea in the kitchen cabinets doesn't quite take the edge off, and again in the afternoon when she deduces that the ache between her temples isn't related to the stress of researching her dissertation.

The tablets are from a lone bottle that resides in her double-mirrored medicine cupboard fit squarely above the sink in her en suite, a leftover prescription from the migraines she had two years previous. She supposes that they are less effective because of the limited shelf-lives of medicine and makes a hastily-scrawled note in cramped letters to remind herself to renew the script for the tablets if the headache continues. The note, like most of the others, will end up somewhere on her bedroom floor, lost between stacks of research and books from where she likes to spread out to study for exams.

Sleep dampens the tender throb and when morning comes, a splash of cool water from the basin in the bathroom does the rest of the job. Bella forgets about the headache, already caught up in her busy, busy schedule for the day. She's a reluctant TA for one of the professors at the university and between grading tests for that class, she also has a meeting with her father that morning, a class in the afternoon, and highly-coveted time in the lab at the college.

Bella dresses for the day with utilitarianism in mind, not that she particularly cares for fashion or that fashion is as complex now as she understands it once had been. A simple, soft boxy dress in a graduated tourmaline pink, with long, tight sleeves that shift into a faintly darker shade, opaque tights, and comfortably flat boots, with a tailored bisque coat and matching scarf for good measure, once she catches a glimpse of the weather readings scrolling along the flat edge of her clock. Her dark hair, kept cropped short to manage the wavy texture and so black it reflects light like an oil-spill, is held back by a simple silver-toned band, her face left bare as she shifts her attention to gathering the right tablet _\- she must grade those papers -_ from her desk to press into the slim, rectangular satchel that she regards as her life-line. With a palm-sized glass tablet in hand, coat over her arm, and her bag hooked through her wrist, Bella leaves her room, stomach growling faintly.

She crosses the hallway and braves the spiraling stairs without removing her eyes from the newsreel on the tablet. Like most people, she has configured the newsreel to her specifications, with articles and updates on the most recent science ventures, notifications of messages from various contacts, and quick-links to the synchronized files across her devices, should she be struck randomly by inspiration. She'd opted out of the newsreel subjects that had no interest to her, such as sports and politics - and so it comes as a mild shock that the primary recurring story on her tablet is one classified as _Breaking News_ and not a bulletin from her favorite science journal.

Bella's brows climb as she rounds the corner into the kitchen, flicking her finger across the tablet to send the video to the larger screen braced over the breakfast nook. The video is of a female news anchor staring seriously into the camera, delivering her report with a flat tone and stiff expression; behind her, projected on the large screen over her shoulder, is another shakier video, made all the more fuzzy for the jumping of the pictures within the frame. Below the anchor, a red bar appears with the words _Breaking News_ in rolling, bold script. Looking at only the background video, Bella can't make heads or tails of what, exactly, the video is supposed to be, or what the news story could possibly be about.

Then, she tunes her ears to the anchor's voice, blinking in comprehension. _"… in worldwide breaking news, reports of unexplained events connected to what scientists have named as the singularity in a series of peculiar solar flares, a so-called Great Flare that occurred sometime in the last fifty years, before the resurrection of the satellite shields, has led to the detaining of several private citizens across the world…"_

Bella frowns, looking again to the shaky video - taken by a bystander - as quick glimpses of bright gold flashes across the screen - and behind the gold, a _person_ _running away_ , muffled shouts from officers following the figure as it darts out of the frame.

 _It's getting worse_ , she thinks with empathy. _And more obvious_.

 _"…Earth's shield protecting against solar radiation has been rumored to be failing since 2173, which has led the scientific community to hypothesizing about the effects of repeated solar radiation to humanity."_ The grave anchor pauses, touching a finger to the audio piece in her ear. " _Governments around the world are keeping quiet about the plausible existence of humans touched by solar radiation, but social media has begun to dub the supposed stars of such events as Extrahuman…"_

Bella lowers the volume on the video until it is background noise, processing the implications of what the scientific community is suggesting as she sets to work on making a quick breakfast. Her skills are unfortunately sparse in the kitchen, but she is adept enough to put together bread and strawberry jam to go with her morning cup of tea, which sit like lead in her stomach.

Rumors had been going around for years about this sort of thing, she knows. Being in college from such a young age, Bella was exposed to all manner of urban legends about humans who could do extraordinary things - climbing walls without assistance, healing from wounds without medical aid, even _flying_. She hadn't believed the tales, of course, and hadn't paid more than a passing interest in listening to the myths, but the rumors had always been there, even before her time. She assigned the same detached curiosity to these rumors as she did to mythological heroes of old.

But now, she reconsiders, if not absently. If the rumors are true, then the branches of science her degrees were in would be the center of momentous attention, that much was true. Bella has already begun mentally cataloguing possible genetic abnormalities and feats of sly engineering that would make such rumors possible and she is distracted enough by her own thoughts that she doesn't notice the time until it is brought to her attention - abruptly - by her tablet.

"Oh," she breathes, standing quickly enough that her head floats, just for a second. She touches a hand to her forehead briefly, considering.

 _No fever_. _No headache, either. Good._

Leaving her plate and cup on the smooth cream marble counter of the breakfast nook, Bella dons first her coat, then her scarf, curling her fingers around the handles of her satchel before tucking her tablet into the generous pocket on the side of her bag. With some amount of effort, she turns her mind from the sensationalized rumors of news media to the upcoming meeting with her father.

It has been a particular routine of Bella's childhood that she had scheduled meetings with her father, bi-weekly awkward half-hours that she had come to regard as progress reports. Her mother, having died while Bella was still a toddler, had married a brilliant man - and a distant one who made it no secret that he hadn't planned for fatherhood at any point in his illustrious career. Bella, having been raised by a series of nannies and house maids, was of the mind that her father was a guardian that she had to tolerate. The bi-weekly meetings were part of this.

That did not mean that Bella didn't dread them, because she did - she loathed the tense silences, filled only with her father's stone expression and her faint attempts at connecting with the man, attempts that she had given up on entirely a few years previous. He paid for her schooling, nothing more, and so she honored these meetings in the same manner that one held appointments with a dentist. They were a necessary evil.

As the meetings were arranged around her father's schedule - and as she was almost certain they were never in residence at the Fifth Avenue townhouse at the same time, if ever - Bella hails a taxi, hoping to reach the Upper East Side with minimal traffic. As she sits back in the shiny black leather seats, the taxi purrs in a well-known vibration, a slow liftoff from the ground as wheels tuck beneath the bed of the vehicle. The taxi driver eases into the second level lane, staying closer to the ground because her trip was not a long one, comparatively. Beneath the air traffic, the streets of Manhattan are remarkably clear, except for pedestrians, personal town cars, and waiting taxis; above, cars zoom in their respective level lanes, the uppermost skimming the topside of buildings in an effort to make the longest of rides between the boroughs a relatively short one.

Bella is terrified of heights. She's glad that her life is a generally well-planned one and that she had never needed to be in a taxi that used any lane above the third level. She can't imagine what it must be like on the highest lane, with people as ants and wind as a companion.

 _Absolutely horrible_ , she decides judiciously as the taxi touches down onto the street in front of a towering, gleaming grey-slated and chrome building. She pays the fare with a swipe of the chip embedded into the tender underside of her left wrist, money automatically deducted from her primary account at her father's bank, nods to the driver politely, and closes the door behind her, straightening her coat.

Her father's building is certainly an intimidating one, a structure standing tall and as perfect as it had surely been the day it was first completed. It has been a cornerstone of her childhood memories, an imposing place of authority and disappointment - and it is an association that has not faltered yet. She feels a vague sense of anxiety as she enters the building and waits to be cleared by the security system, and then again by the security personnel, who call up to her father's office to confirm her appointment. The process is as taxing as usual, with Bella's eyes sharp on the satchel that is searched through and then returned to her swiftly.

 _It's absurd_ , she thinks shrewdly as she steps onto the lift, hands folded primly across her stomach, which is churning tensely. _I come twice a week for the last ten years, and they still insist on verifying my identity. I suppose that says a lot about what father thinks of our relationship_.

It is, as she reflects, a very sad thought.

The secretary awaiting her arrival is new to Bella, a nameless face of sharp cheekbones and a ruby red smile who waves the daughter of her boss to the reception area of one of the uppermost floors of the building. She can't be but a scant few years older than Bella, which isn't unusual in the slightest. This one, at least, is relatively polite, offering an assortment of beverages that Bella turns down with a short shake of her head.

"He's in the middle of a conference call with Beijing," the secretary says into the thick silence, her face half-hidden behind the mahogany and glass monstrosity of her desk. "It sounded rather urgent. He was looking forward to seeing you."

It's on the tip of Bella's tongue to assure the nameless woman that she needn't _lie_ , that Bella's father hadn't ever eagerly anticipated her arrival - on the planet or to his office - and that she didn't need to be _coddled_ about it. But instead, Bella remarks blandly, "Last week it was Shanghai."

Indeed, Swann Pharmaceuticals was a busy enterprise and her father the busiest of them all. Bella had no doubts of her father's brilliance, as it was his strides in biological research that she often found in her textbooks, his revolutionary efforts in various treatments and diagnostic techniques that her own professors raved about, only to cast somewhat sheepish glances in her direction. It was a business that traversed the world and changed the landscape of the future of medicinal science.

It wasn't any surprise the first time their bi-weekly meeting was interrupted in favor of a business call, nor was it a surprise the second, fifth, twelfth, or twenty-eighth time. Now, it was part of the routine, as much as anything else. Bella had long-since lost the twisting-knife of neglect, a sharp pain just under her ribs, when the business came before the daughter.

She expected nothing less at seventeen than she had expected at six, and took to filling the time by taking out the tablet out of her satchel and setting to work in grading term papers of people several years older than herself. Five graded papers later, the secretary meekly calls over the large expanse of the room, "He's ready to see you, now."

Bella checks the time, saves the progress and puts the tablet away, then stands, offering a bland smile to the secretary, who seems at a loss of how to act in this perfectly odd situation.

Bella can almost read the thoughts behind her wide-eyed expression. _They're family, right? This isn't how families behave, so detached…_

But it was. Or at least, that was the way the Swan's did, the two that were left - the brilliant tycoon and his daughter.

Her father is sitting - predictably - behind a fine glass desk filled with screens of data beneath his hands. For a man in his fifties, he has aged well, with only the barest raking of silver through the temples of his dark hair and a neatly shaved jaw, tie done perfectly at the base of his throat. He doesn't look up as she enters and only speaks once the door has closed. "You're late."

Bella stands in the middle of the room, satchel on her shoulder, scarf still around her neck. She does not move to make herself comfortable; she had not done that since before puberty and didn't intend to break habit now. "I am," she agrees stridently. "Your business with Beijing has unfortunately cut our meeting short and..." She pauses, gauging her father's reaction and coming to the swift conclusion that he was already ignoring her, even as she spoke. With a flare of vindication, she presses forward, prattling with a crisp edge to her voice, baiting him to _react_ , somehow. _"_ If I want to beat traffic, I really should be going. My class is starting in an hour and it wouldn't do to be late. What would the other students think?"

Her father, with a heavy, irritated sigh, switches one of the screens on his desk with a deft flick of his fingers, humming noncommittally in the back of his throat. "Very well," he says, still distracted, already tired of her very presence. "Be on time in the future."

The dismissal hurts as much as all the others ever have. She wonders if she were more brave, if she would yell and cry and demand his attention - she wonders, sometimes, if it would change anything. Wonders if he might notice her accomplishments, or deign to comment on how she has grown into her final growth spurt, no longer coltish, but still _young_. She can't remember the last time her father made direct eye contact with her on purpose, and wonders what might happen if she grasped his chin or smashed his screens and made him _look at her_ \- would his eyes be the same clear grey as her own, after all this time? Would he see her, or a girl that looks too much like her mother? And was _that_ why he ignored her so, providing food and shelter but never a fatherly embrace?

Bella bites her tongue against these thoughts threatening to escape, these emotional demands that make her feel like a child - and then departs as silently as she had entered.

The secretary blinks fretfully from behind her desk, but wisely says nothing as Bella steps onto the elevator and holds herself still as the chrome-plated doors close. She maintains her stiff posture until she is marching past the security on the ground floor, outside of the wretched skyscraper, and breathing out a heavy breath as she slumps against the side of a neighboring building.

The tension beneath her ribs dissipates, but the fresh bloom of pain behind her eyes does not. Bella gathers herself, ignores the headache, and hails another taxi. She didn't dwell on yet another failed meeting; instead, she retrieved the tablet from the satchel and set to grading more papers in the general cold comfort of the taxi, glass and metal and yellow paint firmly separating her from the rest of the world. She turns her mind from the ache in her head and in her chest, the ache of longing that her pride refuses to accommodate.

An easy enough set of stubborn tasks, all things considered. Like her father, she has made it a point to move beyond disappointing things - and people.

It is a terrible, terrible skill to have.

* * *

 **A/N: If you were reading this story when it was still classed , then my apologies for the removal without notice. I appreciate the reviews, favorites, and follows for this story when it was pinging as Original Fiction. Thank you. I hope that you come back and relive these chapters with the translated Twilight names and continue to enjoy the story!**

 **That said, to new readers, this is my normal schtick - I have a story that I've written with original characters and I have simply changed the names to match the Twilight fandom. You may notice this in the rather unique character descriptions and details that are embedded in this story. The characters will look different because that's how I wrote them originally. The characters will behave different because that's how I wrote them orginally. The situations will be different - because, yes, that's how I wrote them originally. If that's a problem for you, then I am sorry but I will not be changing this.**

 **As it is - welcome to the story! Buckle in! I'll be updating a few times a week until I catch up to the backlog, so be prepared for a binge!**

 **As always, be brutally honest. I can take it.**  
 **~cupakeriot (Rae)**


	2. Issue No 1:2

**2.**

 **Cardiff, Wales - 2194**

Edward Masen has learned a lot in his life - mainly, if he keeps his head down and his mouth shut, trouble shouldn't follow him. It's been a cardinal lesson since before he could properly write and one that had been beaten and bled into him until the lesson finally _stuck_. And most days, he's grateful that life had stomped the optimism out of his system, because he reckons he'd be like the sorry sods on the telly, getting caught out for being something _different_ and _new_.

Imbeciles. They should have known better, that was it.

Head down, mouth shut. Simple rules.

Hard to follow, though, because it's Edward's natural inclination to get into someone's shite before they can get into his. He's like a rabid animal that way, positively frothing at the mouth for a chance to show just how much damage he can _do_ now - because when it counted, Edward didn't do nearly enough. Couldn't, really. Wasn't ready.

He's ready now. The irony is, of course, that he can't allow himself to be ready for his own damned safety. He sneers at the telly in the pub, wiping down sticky counters with peanut shells crunching beneath his boots, and spares a second to pat himself on the back. He'd been smarter than those fools, at least, and that was saying something, wasn't it?

 _Extrahuman_. _What absolute tripe._

Edward had been _extra_ when he'd still been stuck in the orphanage. Hell, maybe that was why his sodding parents didn't want him in the first place. Maybe they'd _known_ what Edward would grow up to be, what Edward would one day be able to do with nothing more than a tiny thought.

And what did that say about _them_ , if they'd known? Either they were more shite of parents than he'd assumed - leaving someone like him at the hands of humans, knowing what he was - or they'd been in no position to raise a child, like the nuns had always tried to tell him and the rest of the orphan hoard. Neither were particularly comforting thoughts, were they? They cared too much or they didn't care at all, and all it resulted in was Edward's miserable childhood.

Edward had been telling himself that his parentage didn't matter since grade school and the only reason he's thinking about it now is because his peculiar genetics are under international fire - because Edward knows that, sooner or later, some mad scientist is going to catch on quick that it's not the bloody solar flares causing superpowered people to crawl out of the woodwork. Sure, maybe the solar flares started it all, but Edward's reasonably sure that it's more than that - that there's something in his genetic material that made him more than predisposed or whatever.

He's no scholar, though. Not suited to books and learning the way some of his peers had been - mostly because it felt too slow for Edward, but that was beside the point when he'd barely scraped through his A levels. His little theory about the mutations is probably a load of bull he'd picked up from some dime-store science fiction novel.

Still, he knows all it would take was one sorry sucker getting caught in the wrong trap - and by the time the experiments were done, the entire world would be able to pin-point the _exact_ reason some people were human and some were _more_ than human. From what he'd gathered from the vids, the genetic factor was just a theory. For now.

Edward, not prone to hoping for anything, hopes that it'll stay a theory until long after he's dead. The absolute last thing he wants to deal with is being on the run. He's done quite enough of that to last a life time. And while he's not particularly fond of Cardiff, at least it's more peaceful than London, where he'd been for almost two years before getting caught up in a scheme that had gone sideways. Wales was safe in a way the rest of England wasn't - not too far into the countryside, not under the thrall of a lively city. It seems to Edward that unlike the rest of the world, the UK was decidedly behind the times - not that he minded, as it worked to his advantage.

Most of the time.

Bartending at a pub wasn't ever Edward's goal in life, not that he'd ever had much of a goal at all, but at times like _this_ \- with two drunks looking to start a brawl - he found that the excitable threat of violence was suited to him. He was comfortable in the heat of the moment and usually he anticipated pub brawls with a bit of merriment, but in light of the newscasts gagging the web, Edward's mood isn't as mirthful as usual.

"Oi," he calls to the swaying drunks, eying the slosh of ale over the rim of a silver-cast mug with irritation, damp rag held loosely in his grip. "Take the ruckus outside or save it for when I'm not on shift, because you wankers don't want to deal with me right now. In a mood, I am, and as it happens, I haven't the patience to end your scuffle non-violently."

One of the men, the taller of the two with a nose that's already been broken at least twice, belches and leers at Edward - and Edward sighs, resigned, because drunks were already quite stupid and this one looked to be stupider than most. He's got a glint in his eye that Edward recognizes well, the sort of expression that tells Edward he's being underestimated because he's not physically intimidating despite his lanky height.

"'s a posh lil' accent ya got there, mate," the drunk slurs, casting a glance to the companion he'd been ready to punch not a moment earlier, before Edward had drawn the man's ire to himself. "'nd I don't think a posh lads gonna be kickin' _me_ outta this pub, not today. What's ya think?"

The question isn't directed to Edward, but to the drunk's marginally more sober acquaintance, who has been entirely too quiet during the course of this interaction. In Edward's vast experience, the silent types are the ones who pack the worst sort of punch, the kind of punch Edward has no interest of being on the receiving end of ever again. The pissed one he can handle well enough, because drunks throw their weight around with clumsy menace; but a man loosened with a bit of alcohol and enough cognition to control his motor functions is a different story.

"Think a posh lad won't do nothing to us, mate," says the sober one, clenching and unclenching his fists reflexively, then reaching into his pocket to throw a fistful of change onto the sticky pub floor, grinning maliciously. "He won't turn away paying customers, will he?"

The drunk man chortles, as do some of the regulars - though they laugh for different reasons, Edward imagines, having seen the young barkeep in action a time or two. Sighing again, Edward drops the damp rag onto the table at his back and relaxes his posture, reaching for that part of himself that he keeps a secret from the world in preparation for the fuckery heading his way.

Predictably, the pissed one jumps in first, swinging a meaty fist ahead of his own equilibrium in an unrefined, aggressive stumble - and Edward reacts, blocking the hit with one hand around hairy knuckles, gaze focused on the outdated, tacky gold watch adorning the drunk's wrist. Edward pushes - mentally, silently - at the cheap alloy, a subtle enough direction paired with a well-practiced maneuver that leave the drunk sprawled on the floor, blinking dumbly.

The sober one's brows raise in surprise - and he's right to be shocked at the outcome of the brief scuffle because he _did_ size Edward up correctly. Edward may be a natural-born fighter and he may have groomed himself into a level of fitness to enhance that scrappiness he has, but there is no way that Edward should have been any match for a man who outweighed him by at least three stones, even using the drunk's weight against him. It _should_ have been Edward on the floor, but then nobody knew about Edward's knack with metals, did they?

And Edward had always been keen to have more than a little metal on him at all times - like the thin pewter bracelets circling his wrists, the plain band around his middle finger, a few bars through his brow that slid out easy enough, another couple on the ears. All pieces that, with Edward's particular skill, came off in the space of a second, ready to be reshaped to his needs and replaced smoothly afterward. It had taken him time to learn the fine-tuned control required for that parlor trick, but it had been worth the time and the headaches, especially to add more skills, like the extra edge of energy he pushed behind any movements _he_ made or the manipulation of force his opponent aimed in his direction. As long as he - or anyone else - was wearing metal, Edward could _easily_ control the force of movements.

It didn't always work. Some people, especially in 2194, didn't wear alloys the way the used to, and so Edward's offensive techniques were hit or miss half the time - he was out of luck if his opponent didn't fancy antique fashions, or wore clothing without metal adornments, and _those_ were the times when Edward took the worst hits of his life.

But it did work this time and the bit of disbelief that Edward could take down a man that much larger than him could be written off fairly quick given how pissed the man was - Edward could easily say that he was lucky the drunkard had stumbled. He was a good liar. It was another skill he'd cultivated with purpose and one that was regularly useful.

Looking up at the second part of the dastardly duo with his brows drawn into a furrow, Edward wonders if he'll need to lie or if he'll need to utilize the bit of _extra_ that God - in all the wisdom of the universe - had seen fit to bestow upon an orphan. Edward rolls his shoulders back, keeping his body loose. "Is it your turn, or will you need help dragging this sod out of the pub? My boss doesn't like bloodstains, you see, and I'm not fond of cleaning with bleach. Distressing to the nose, you understand."

A few of the patrons laugh when the sober one scrambles to hook his hands under the drunkards arms, struggling to drag the heavy weight until someone is kind enough to at least hold the pub door open. Edward watches with his arms crossed over his chest, slowly pulling his metalsense back until he can only feel the alloys on his own body.

"Another one for the books?"

Edward turns, rolling his eyes as he ducks down to pick up the rag he'd dropped, then standing to stare at Emile humorlessly. "You can't seriously think I enjoy this," he says to his coworker with a huff of irritation. "And where were you, anyway?"

"Stock room. We were out of scotch behind the bar."

"Seems like we're always out of scotch anytime some sod gets rowdy," Edward observes keenly, not believing for a second that the bar stock was ever low on a bottle of scotch. The owner _collects_ scotch, has an entire shelf dedicated to vintage bottles that is lit up with prideful recessed lighting and their boss had made it clear that the pub would only be out of scotch if the world was literally ending.

Emile shrugs, diminutive shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter as Edward shoves him in a bout of good-nature, dropping the damp rag on Emile's head, much to Emile's great squawking protest. "Oi! Watch the hair! Styling gel isn't cheap, you know!"

Edward snorts. "Go do something useful," he suggests with a light sneer. "And checking the stock doesn't count. If I have to break up another brawl by myself, I'll leave you to the sharks."

"You wouldn't!"

"I would," Edward counters, hopping over the edge of the bar and starting in on refills that Emile had missed during the last ten minutes. "The lads would love to keep you company, I'm sure. Isn't that right, Winston?"

Winston, an old and greying regular of the pub, hiccups a laugh around his ale that sends Emile skittering nervously around the bar, bussing and whatnot. With Emile out of ear shot, Winston leans forward on the bar, elbows digging into weathered wood. "He's not suited, is he? To the work?"

Edward tilts his head noncommittally, but he knows that Winston is right. Even in Cardiff, pubs aren't places that skittish lads should be in, especially not lads like Emile who can't work up the nerve to actually _deal_ with the customers. It's not Edward's place to have an opinion, though, with Emile being the nephew of the owner. Nepotism rearing its ugly head was the last thing Edward wanted to deal with - because he needed this job and the money and the boss who was perfectly fine paying credits under the table.

"He'll settle in," Edward says after a moment, sliding a metal jug across the bartop, his eyes catching on the newscast still playing on low volume throughout the pub. It's the same footage that's been playing the entire morning, the same interview with some recluse blogger hailing the end of humanity as the world knows it and Edward, feeling an uncharacteristic flash of queasy nerves, exhales heavily. "He'll need to, I think."

Winston burps, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth with confusion. "Wha' was that?"

Edward shakes his head, reining in his concerns about the world outside of the pub and the mostly comfortable life he's made for himself. He needs to act as normal as possible because he'd already drawn attention to himself by breaking up yet another pub brawl. So he smiles, stiff and fake, and holds up a bottle of something incredibly strong and alcoholic.

"Nothing, nothing," he says under his breath, pulling out two shot glasses and setting the glasses between himself and Winston on the bar. "Toast to my victory?"

And he wonders - as the bitter tang burns down his throat - how long his victories would last.


	3. Issue No 1:3

**3.**

 **Manhattan, New York - 2194**

Undeniably, the headaches were getting worse. Much worse. It wasn't a simple matter of popping a tablet and going about her day anymore. She could hardly stand to be anywhere but the close quiet of her room, shut away from the light and sound that dug tension into her brain and made thinking a very difficult task. And unfortunately for Bella, hiding in the safe comfort of her bed isn't an option - she has entirely too much to accomplish to waste days languishing in the pain of a migraine.

Bella forces herself out of bed and through her morning routine, stubbornly ignoring the ache that seems to ping from all corners of her brain as she steps around Constance - a well-paid housemaid who had been a focal point of Bella's lonely childhood - to woodenly chew on dry toast, which is about as much as she can manage to keep down. She'd doubled the dosage of the pain tablets and was suffering through the ineffectiveness with a truly grueling dose of nausea.

Constance clucks over the half-eaten plate, peering at Bella with concern. "The tea you like was delivered yesterday. A fresh tin. I can make some for you, if you like?"

The offer would usually be enough for Bella to wave away with a reminder that it was _Constance_ who had set the house-rules when she'd first started working for the Swan's and who had made it perfectly clear that she was hired to _clean_ , though she did occasionally cook when Bella was ill. Bella had always been keen to this plan, the idea of learning a domestic skill as appealing as one of her intellectual pursuits - she'd always put up a fuss at the idea of anyone taking care of her, probably because she'd come to expect a certain amount of coldness from the adult figures in her life. Most days, Bella took pride in making her own simple meals. That Constance thought to offer a tea that Bella specially imported twice a year was enough of a clue that Bella was wearing the pain of the migraine on her face.

She pushes the plate away gently, rubbing grainy crumbs from her fingers with a shake of her head. "I'm fine," she insists, ignoring the doubt that was clear on Constance's gracefully age-lined face. "There's a project in the lab that has my attention. Really. I've been thinking about augmenting relief tablets, creating higher dosages for terminal patients or chronic pain sufferers. It's a distracting problem, trying to balance and counteract the side effects…"

And that is true enough, because it _had_ crossed Bella's mind earlier that morning to do just that. Pharmaceutical companies had been trying to strengthen the pain relief tablets for years with very little luck; in all of the clinical trials, patients had still suffered from addiction, which was the exact opposite of their goal. The tablet that Sion Pharmaceutical - that her father - had invented were revolutionary, safe from addiction symptoms and gentle on the body and trying to make them better was nothing short of a challenge. The tablets worked on everyone and for every reason.

Or they were supposed to, which was why Bella had frowned in contemplation at the half-empty bottle in her bathroom that morning, wondering why on Earth the tablets weren't working for _her_. Rather, why they weren't working anymore.

It was a bit - worrisome.

Bella smiles stiffly when Constance accepts her flimsy excuse. It's not as if Bella spacing out during meals is particularly odd, as she had been doing so for her entire life as her mind snagged on a problem that she thought was worth solving. Never mind that Bella's current degree wasn't associated with biochemical engineering - Constance didn't know or care to know the difference and the last thing Bella wanted was someone worrying over her.

She never knew what to do with concern - or, really, emotions that weren't direct. Another pitfall of her childhood, she knows, but this is one that she isn't sure how to mend. Too much like her father, in that respect.

"Try to have a better lunch," Constance suggests softly before breezing out of the room.

Bella murmurs something in the affirmative, then braces herself for the cool December air waiting for her outside of the townhouse. She hails a taxi with trepidation and politely requests that the cabbie drive on the actual road, which he does, but not without shooting her a funny look. She turns her eyes to her hands, fully aware that people did _not_ make that request everyday, and plays with the soft fabric of her billowy plum sleeves to distract herself from the mounting motion sickness. For his trouble, she makes sure to allot a respectable tip into the credit-scan and hurries into Columbia's Science building before the taxi door is fully closed behind her, steps swift as they carry her up three steps and into the relative warmth of the lobby.

During the time in which Bella was touring colleges, picking the _right_ school had been a point of special concern; she'd been the youngest in all the tour groups, just barely thirteen, and reeling from the intimidating expanse that the classic Ivy Leagues had to offer. Columbia had, of course, been at the top of the list for several reasons, the least of which had been the fact that the college had been her father's alma mater _and_ where her parents met so many years prior. It was a simple matter of accepting her need to be close to home, no matter how unfulfilling that home was, for Bella to apply to Columbia. But what she never told anyone was that it was Columbia's Science building that had truly sold her to the institution.

Like most buildings bearing Columbia's great title, the Science wing had been reconstructed twice - once in the Third War, and again when technology demanded an extremely favorable facelift. It was a squat building, shorter than the Liberal Arts College across the wide, lushly developed quad that had been integrated into the infrastructure during rebuilding efforts. In all honesty, the building itself is underwhelming, a demure slate color, cobbled in the old fashion as a nod to Columbia's history, and paned with simple square windows across the entire front of the first floor. The lobby is equally as unassuming, done in stark whites and dull greys, and bisected by a circular desk that stands sentry in front of a tinted glass wall that reads _Columbia Science_ in stylized text; the desk is stationed regularly by undergraduates looking for work-study credits and who operate the retinal scan that allows entrance beyond the desk. This was standard to most moderately-important buildings in large cities, Bella knew, and she had not thought it anything other than regular when she'd been accepted to the university - her father's building, after all, had a much more complex security clearance, most of which Bella wasn't privy.

It was all expected; it was all up to code and all Bella had speculated. That is, the visible floors of the Science building, full of lecture halls and professor offices and simple labs, were all perfectly predictable; the sub-levels, though, were what caught and held Bella's eye. It was a point of Columbia's pride that the Science building was home to one of the largest surveys of sub-levels in national universities - and also the point of interest that Bella had latched onto. All of the basement sub-levels were home to the most extraordinary, cutting-edge laboratories a scientist could dream of, no two labs quite the same or serving the same purpose. She knew that the highly-coveted sub-level labs had snatched many prospective students from other universities - and she was no exception.

Presently, she wades through the retinal scan, passes through the tinted glass doors, and nods to the guards on duty with practiced ease, slipping into a partially-filled lift and pressing the button for the sub-level that was home to her lab. She manages - barely - to hold onto the contents of her stomach when the lift drops quickly, grabbing the railing to steady her sense of gravity that battles against the pressing headache.

 _Hadn't anticipated that_ , she thinks, a bit sour that the headache was no longer something she could ignore and that it was starting to affect her daily life in ways that Bella was ill-equipped to handle. She makes a mental note to ask one of the janitorial staff after use of the emergency stairs should the blasted headache persist. It never hurt to have an alternate route.

Laurent is already in the lab once Bella has caught her bearings and exited to lift, hand pressed against the biometric scanner outside of her lab's doors. She watches, bemused, as Laurent swipes through the lab settings, adjusting heat, lighting, and sound filtration with obsessive attention to detail. Though also a graduate student who poses as TA for one of the chemistry classes twice a week, Laurent is several years older than Bella, handsomely showing the first traces of age lining the smooth umber skin of his forehead, and very set in his ways, so much that other labs refused to tolerate his presence. For Bella, though, Laurent was the best lab partner she could hope for - she thought him brilliant for all his idiosyncrasies, which she understands is not something Laurent was accustomed to, least of all from young women.

"I'm positive that nobody modified your settings since yesterday," she says as she enters the lab, the soft hiss of protective air locks releasing and cooling the room with a fresh wave of oxygen, much to Laurent's annoyance as he grumbles over the lab's computer system. "They wouldn't dare."

" _You_ just dared," Laurent accuses, though with little heat. His face is one of open expression, a wide plane of squared features, enhanced by the cut of his hair and the prim buttoning of his bluebell-colored shirt, lapels starched sharply and complimentary to the angular creases of his slacks, all hidden neatly behind a spotless lab coat. She suspects that Laurent's irritation would be a sight to behold, probably the only circumstance where he wasn't precisely constructed. " _Casually_ opening the air locks like that."

"I had to come into the lab."

"After I perfected the settings?"

Bella reaches her station, setting down her satchel and seating herself before the next pulse of her head sends her sprawling to the floor in dizziness. "And your precious settings will neutralize if you give them a moment," she points out patiently.

Their lab is one of a handful that is designed with such a sophisticated airlock. Though all labs are able to contain noxious fumes resulting from experiments gone wrong, few of them are able to filter those fumes within the emergency air seal to also protect the scientists, not just the whole building. For all that she and Laurent dabbled with chemical properties, it was an extra measure of safety that Bella appreciated.

 _And one that seems apropos for my new project_ , she reflects with a brush of humor, attaching her tablet to the blunt end of a long black cord, which projected the contents of her tablet onto the holoscreen settled firmly between her station and Laurent's.

It wasn't completely necessary, of course, for Bella to pull up the exact specifications from the tablet, not with her memory being what it is, even with the headache. But she enjoys the ritual, appreciates the serenity that comes with the motions of settling into a day at the lab.

She closes her eyes briefly when the start up of the projectors casts bright light across her retinas, sending a fresh wave of sensitivity pinging across her consciousness. The pain, however brief, will be back - and it serves as a reminder that her new project was a worthy one. The part of herself that was purely _scientist_ had already identified the most significant and logical questions, the ones that she might find answers to the quickest.

Was it only her tablets that were not effective? Were others suffering the same disappointment? Had she built a tolerance to the relief tablets by doubling the recommended dosage? And if so, what were the effects of _that_?

Bella felt a certain responsibility to find out - not only for herself, but also because it was her father's product that was failing and as she was the heir apparent, it would one day be _her_ product falling short of standards.

She did not - would not - consider other alternatives, headache notwithstanding. Bella is a doctor, but she isn't _that_ kind of doctor, nor did she have a desire to be. Symptomatic or not, she was not a hypochondriac; she was a skeptic at heart, and one who believed that scientific inquiry had the ability to produce real worth-while results.

Bella began the query, taking the half-full bottle of relief tablets from her bag and setting it on the table before her. The rattle of pills against hard plastic draws Laurent's attention, as she should have predicted. Laurent is, if possible, more innately curious than Bella.

Over the square lens of his glasses, Laurent peers over the smooth black countertop of her impeccably clean lab station. "Sion's relief tablets? I know that's your future company, but I was under the impression your current thesis was on molecular biology," he says leadingly, meandering closer with the sort of clumsy grace that spoke to his nervous habits more than his fine motor control. "Are you sick?"

"No," Bella says, more forcefully than she intends. She straightens in her seat, modulating her tone with an air of flippancy. "It's nothing like that."

Laurent, perhaps not the most adept at social cues, shrugs a lean shoulder. "Thought all the other attempts weren't successful," he comments thoughtfully. "Though, you're uniquely brilliant, aren't you?"

Bella shakes her head at his unintentional flattery, breathing out a bit easier as she expands on the falsehood she'd told to Constance. "I'm just wondering if it's possible to make them better. I've…hit a wall in my current research. This is just to clean the slate, a little side project. Besides, I might as well put my other degree to use."

 _Lie, lie, lie_ , she says to herself. _I know why I'm doing this and I know why I don't want Laurent to put clues together. And I don't want to be right, about any of it_ …

With a memory like hers - the kind that's more of a deadly snare than a steel trap, the kind that logs _everything_ in the most excruciating of detail - there is no denying the rational facts laid out before her. Lies were uncomfortable to tell, though not difficult to recall, and less difficult than lies was empirical evidence. And Bella - she already _knew_ everything she needed to know, even before beginning her experiments hidden behind flimsy postulations. Because the extensive clinical trials for the original relief tablets were impressive, but not universal - there was a very, very select group of individuals that the tablets simply couldn't help.

Bella didn't want to be part of that percentage.

She didn't want comprehend her death sentence for as long as possible.


	4. Issue No 1:4

**4.**

 **Cardiff, Wales - 2194**

"You'll want to be lookin' out for that one, lad."

Edward raises his brow, piercing tugging at skin as an ever-cloying reminder, his metalsense buzzing innately as he eyes Winston wearily. The old man is nearly three sheets, he knows, and probably doesn't understand half the shite falling out of his grizzled mouth.

Still, there's something to be said about the wisdom that comes with age, and Winston is the oldest man Edward knows. And for all that Edward considers himself to have a healthy dose of paranoia, he'd be a right fool to turn down a second pair of eyes watching his back - eyes of a drunkard or not, it didn't matter. Point is that Edward can't see his back as well as someone else can.

Edward leans his elbows on the bar, cutting his eyes to the side and dropping his voice. There's nobody around, really, as the time is right in the lull before the after-work happy hour; the only patrons in the pub are the regular geezers, Edward, and Emile, and of all those regulars, Winston is the only one prone to sticking his nose into a barkeep's business. "Looking out for what, exactly, grandpa? The sky falling or something?"

Winston nods to the door perpendicular to Edward's back, the one that Emile is constantly disappearing to when the scene in the pub gets too rough for his tastes. The chipped paint around the tarnished handle draws Edward's attention for a moment as he wonders what Emile could _possibly_ be doing in the stock room for the second time in as many hours. Making a call to his Mum?

Edward turns back to Winston, straightening from his lean, frowning at the grime sticking to his forearms with an exasperated sigh. Keeping a pub clean was _impossible_. "Don't know what you mean, mate. Emile's shiny, you know. Done nothing wrong, not to me."

"He will," Winston counters firmly, looking altogether more alert than Edward had ever witnessed. There's a shadow of harshness settled into Winston's scruff and wrinkles, an echo of the soldier Edward imagines he once was, someone who fought in the Third War. A veteran who had Edward's respect. "You just wait, lad. He'll turn on you like a scorpion if you don't watch yourself."

 _Like a scorpion_ , Edward thinks doubtfully when Emile emerges from the store room fussing with his hair, considering how meek Emile could be on a good day. He doesn't strike Edward as the type to be so vicious, but Edward wouldn't rightly know, would he? He didn't interact with anyone outside of the pub, made it a point to actively distance himself from those around him so he'd have less bridges to burn. Emile could be as poisonous as a scorpion and Edward would have no idea until it was too late to do anything about it.

He takes Winston's advice with a healthy grain of salt, keeps to himself for the rest of the shift, hoping that nobody would be dull enough to start another sodding pub fight that he'd have to break up. He's lucky in that respect, but not lucky enough that Winston stops dropping increasingly unsubtle tips each time Emile disappears into the store room.

"Wha's he doin' there?" Winston slurs, grasping at his mug of ale like a man to a life rafter.

Edward, who is reasonably sure that Winston's liver is crying for mercy, rolls his eyes, scrubbing down the counter with more force that was actually necessary. "Don't know, don't care," he says tersely. "Not my place to ask."

It isn't - even if Emile wasn't related to the owner, it hadn't ever been Edward's style to stick his nose into business other than his own. Doing otherwise would invite trouble he wasn't interested in entertaining, and it's not as if Edward was terribly concerned about other people _anyway_ , was it? He's a bit selfish like that. He knows that's why he can't keep a girl beyond a night and knows that he feeds this aspect of himself out of concern for his safety. Couldn't let people get close - and the second he turned into a likeable lad rather than the sneering smartarse he was now, the more people would want to know about him and -

Well. People just couldn't know, not with the news being what it was. Better for everyone if Edward was solitary and everyone else was ignorant. Not that people had trouble being ignorant.

Except for Winston, who is entirely too perceptive for any decent drunkard. "You kno' wha' I think, lad? Think he's reportin', that's wha' he's up to, reportin' on you."

"He's not," Edward counters blandly.

But he wonders if Winston's right, wonders if he should move out of Cardiff sooner rather than later? He'd been here a few months longer than other places he's lived and maybe he's too comfortable. Maybe he's letting things slip, giving Emile something _to_ report if that's what he was up to in the storage room. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility, of course. Just the other day, the telly told a story of a lad who was turned into the government by his own boyfriend.

It happened. That was reality, now.

Edward's not keen to let it happen to him, though, and he watches Emile with a sharper suspicion, mind in hyperdrive trying to analyze every action of his lazy coworker, which is an exceptionally shoddy waste of time. For the life of him, Edward doesn't see what Winston sees, doesn't know what he's even looking for as he's looking.

It makes his skin tight, his nerves more jagged and - it's not as if Edward's ever been the _relaxed_ sort, is it? But he knows the difference, the tension crawling up his spine and settling around his neck, pinching and pervasive. He almost drops a glass behind the bar, muffling a curse as he corrects his grip and serves up the next order, diaphragm binding his breath like asthma. Edward hasn't dropped anything since Sister Thela rapped his knuckles for breaking the saucer of her teacup when he was still at the orphanage and new to the nuns; he has a thin white scar over the top of his left hand where one of the Sister's raps had split open the tender skin with the too-sharp edge of wood. That he's dropping things _now_ , obviously far enough off his game that he's literally fumbling, casts an unpleasant taste in the back of his throat.

Emile, across the bar with a platter full of empties he's been reluctantly collecting, watches the fumble with a shadow over his face, his expression one of careful consideration. It's the most cognizant Edward has ever seen Emile, who is usually content to whinge as loudly as possible while also skiving off his duties, and that, if nothing else, makes Edward consider Winston's warning with a bit less salt.

 _He'll turn on you like a scorpion_.

Right now, Emile's pleasantly angular features remind Edward vividly of a sharp-clawed, poison-filled predator, a perfect imitation of a scorpion if ever there was one. Having relied on his gut instinct for so long - because for as useful as his metalsense is, it doesn't really offer a clear warning of malevolence the way natural human instinct does - Edward draws his awareness inward, considering, weighing his options all while he watches Emile watch him.

Uncomfortable doesn't even begin to cover it now that Edward's keen to the issue.

And Edward, he doesn't believe in signs, but he takes this as one - and during his next break, a slip of ten minutes that left just enough time to cram a biscuit into his mouth, Edward dials up the owner and delivers his verbal notice.

"Something came up," he says evasively when the owner, put-out from the sudden resignation, demands an answer in a surly tone. "I can stay for a few days. A week at most, help train up the new barkeep…"

The owner of the tiny dive pub accepts the offer grudgingly, which doesn't bother Edward in the slightest. He's not a people person. He could give two shites about what anybody thinks, especially grimy absentee pub owners who Edward knows for a fact doesn't bother with resumes or previous work experience, because the owner hadn't asked for Edward's recommendations, had he? No. Edward doesn't mind, though, just as he doesn't mind the owner's disgruntlement - both work for Edward, each advantageous.

Edward is home late, well into the early morning hours after closing up the pub, and is more than ready to sleep into the next afternoon, his muscles protesting against the hard material of his mattress as he works to relax. But his mind is _going_ \- he couldn't sleep even if the sky _were_ falling, he's sure. With an annoyed groan, he reaches for his cracked tablet, scrolling past the newsfeeds that he's already memorized with a jab of wariness.

He wastes an hour poking around the net until he settles on his next location, avoiding areas that he knows are dangerous already for people like him - no Russia, no China, and definitely no Korea. He knows his home can't be anywhere local, even if he did want to stay in Wales, and he certainly didn't want to be back in a city as busy as London.

 _Dublin it is,_ he thinks wryly. Ireland had always been against the times, anyway, and at least moving to Dublin wouldn't force Edward to learn a new language. It was an added bonus that the Irish _lived_ in pubs and that pubs were the majority of Edward's resume. He taps in an application for both a one-room flat and a job at the local watering hole, waving the underside of his wrist over the glitchy scanner on the tablet and waiting for his identification to load, receiving an automated message from both applications that someone would contact him within the next twenty-four hours.

 _Good enough_.

It was always good enough.

But this time, too little, too late.


	5. Issue No 1:5

**5.**

 **Manhattan, New York - 2194**

As the headaches turn to migraines that claw across what seems like every inch of grey matter Bella possesses, other symptoms being to emerge, ones that leave her rattled in the wake of trying - and failing - to explain them. The symptoms are rare enough that she calls them _episodes_ in the log she keeps synchronized on her tablet under a dull filename made of more numbers than letters.

 _I'm not being paranoid_ , she says to herself as she saves the latest log, worrying a hangnail on her thumb until she winces and clicks out of the program. _This is caution, not paranoia_. _Unless paranoia is another symptom…_

The occasional episodes are faintly worrisome, as she deems them more psychological than neurological, which is inherently disconcerting on a general level. Bella, who has always been in full control of her faculties, quivers at the thought that she could be on the verge of losing that. Because -

 _What else would explain voices in my head_ , _inconsistent as they may be?_

Bella is able to write it off easily enough, though. She reasons that she's not hearing voices in her _head_ , but rather voices bouncing off walls, echoed through alleys, blaring through tiny speakers in cells, tablets, and ceilings. If anything, the voices are just traces of her own thoughts, perhaps distorted by a marked lack of sleep since the onset of other symptoms.

Unbefitting of a scientist - or maybe appropriately for a scientist - Bella grasps the shadow of deniability with two hands and forges ahead into her research, which is considerably more important than any symptoms she may or may not have imagined. She's on the brink, she's certain of it, and she uses that as motivation to continue on even as she feels as though she's wilting where she stands.

Determination coupled with denial is a persuasively strong driving force.

Bella steals extra moments in the lab - staying later and later each day, basking in the dark, sterile, silent environment as she investigates and correlates all manner of data. Usually, she would take the work home with her, balancing her life between classes and graded and experimenting with ease.

But her room in the townhouse is not a sanctuary. The ambient noise of the city that leaks through walls and windows grates on her fraying nerves, plucks at the sensitive scope of her hearing until Bella is trembling on the cusp of sleep, yet unable to reach blissful slumber. The reprieve that sleep had once offered is shattered by the migraine - and while the lab during the day is nearly as hellish as her room at home, she finds that the laboratory at night, nestled deep within the bowels of the Science building, is removed enough that she can sleep.

She can _think_ a bit more clearly, with a margin more of rationality, and she covets those scant hours, bundling as much productivity as possible between snatched hours of unfulfilling sleep. The insomnia shows in slowly-darkening shadows beneath her eyes; the near-constant pain, no longer managed by the tablets, is evident in the furrow in her brow. Her appetite is gone, though she strictly retains her normal caloric intake with nutrition drinks also produced by her father's company; she likes the one tasting of chocolate the best when she can choke it down in flighty sips of a straw. She tells herself that the obvious toll isn't dissimilar to the stress endured during the week of final exams, clutching the lie to her breast as desperately as any denial.

Having graduated in the top three percentile of her class - and even not being _that_ kind of doctor - Bella recognizes the symptoms as dangerous, having already identified them from stand-out diagnostic guides she's encountered over the course of her studies, her memory as sharp as ever, and as unforgiving. She pushes for results with a resurgence of determination, covertly making a temporary home for herself in the stiffly-upholstered bench pressed against the middle wall of the lab, the one that she and Laurent use as a nap station for long-running experiments. She hopes that he doesn't notice she's been sleeping there for several consecutive nights. She doesn't want to confront the issue until she's - absolutely _sure_.

Despite the migraine, Bella takes pride in the notion that it can never be said that she isn't at least half as dedicated as her father, and patient to boot. Ever locked in the comparisons made between father and daughter, it's her understanding that she, at least, does not hound for results like a wolf food sustenance. That, too, is a source of pride.

Bella remains at her station after Laurent leaves and carefully tracks the progress of her tentative experimentations with the relief tablets, running simulation after simulation through a program of her own design - and when the neighboring labs have cleared, she shrugs off her white lab coat and hangs it next to Laurent's, releasing her spine from the stubborn posture she'd retained for the sake of appearances. Slumping onto the glossy black counter amid sleek, state-of-the-art equipment, she lets her cheek rest against the cool surface, relishing the negligible chill for what it offers.

The lab, having always been a source of comfort and escapism, is nothing short of a solace as of late and it is with a resounding level of comfort that she reaches for the lab control settings, altering the tint of the lab's glass walls and the interior lighting to a more bearable level. Knowing Laurent's preferences, she makes a mental note to return the settings to his particular levels before she settles in for the night.

Which would be done soon - or as soon as she'd run the last of her simulations again. She's certain that she's close to a breakthrough. The motivation of pain kept her turning back to augmenting the relief tablets even with exhaustion nipping at her heels. At the very least, the last minor alteration she'd made on the chemical parameters had been promising, and that gave Bella hope.

Not that it was _easy_ to change the already perfect formula of a perfect drug. Her father's brilliance was unmatched, or at least it was before Bella set her mind to changing his masterpiece, the crowning glory of his success. She'd examined the chemistry with a fine-toothed comb, played with ratios only to watch them fail in the simulation; there was very little room in the entire compound formula to alter in the first place, and Bella was aiming to do more than a tiny tweak. She wanted it stronger and wanted it to last longer, but neither of those things were mutually possible.

Yet.

Bella brainstorms dosage methods on her personal tablet while the simulation runs for her last formula alteration of the night, toying idly with various delivery techniques - instead of a dissolving pill, perhaps one that is swallowed, or a spray, or a thin strip sitting on the tongue? A patch? And maybe she should create some of these alternate delivery methods with her father's formula, see if she can attain a higher level of effectiveness without changing chemical concentrations at all-

 _"Simulation version 9.0 complete."_

Quickly, Bella pushes the tablet to the side, standing to examine the hologram display closer, wincing at the brightness rotating slowly in front of her calculating gaze. Her fingers twist together, hope lighting her chest because if she isn't mistaken - and she's not - this is what she's _good_ at - then the simulation was showing a successful augmentation.

And an astounding one, at that, given how far-fetched this idea was in the first place - the kind of idea that was the last resort, a desperate act meant more for ruling out possibilities rather than attaining anything _usable_.

Chest tight, Bella touches one hand to her mouth in breathless excitement, the thrill of creation scorching through the pain of the headache, as if in positive omen. "This is it," she says to the lab, manipulating the holoscreen, twisting and turning her formula until she's seen it from all angles. It looks solid, better than it was before. She smiles faintly, pulling her hands from the neon display, trying to douse the fierce flaming hope until further results could compound her discovery. "Computer, run the simulation again. Apply delivery methods alpha through gamma and analyze for potency advantages and disadvantages. Transfer results to my private server."

The computer complies silently, hologram fading from the room with a muted hum of the projector, leaving Bella to lean boneless against her lab station, uncaring of the sharp edge biting into her ribs. She understands - in spite of herself - the addictive magnetism of inventing and understands her father's obsession with his own brilliance for perhaps the first time in her life. Knowing for herself the dizzy high obtained from such a breakthrough, Bella is able to distance herself from the disappointing relationship she shares with Charles Swan.

Why would he ever want to be a father to her, an unremarkable biological creation, when he could change the world with creations that _meant_ something? The deep-seated pain of his constant distance is alleviated - a bit, enough for her to cope with the hurt with better ease.

Bella performs the motions of shutting down the lab with thoughtless grace, mind still ensnared with her tentative victory even as the pulse of the headache edges into deeper, less avoidable territory. She thinks about the formula, almost smug in the knowledge that the migraine would be _gone_ soon enough - and that she could continue to live in a state of denial for a while longer.

Fatigue nips ruthlessly at her heels sooner than she'd expected, and coupled with the rising pain in her head, Bella sinks onto the cushioned bench without feeding herself. Skipping a meal is much more preferable to the inevitable nausea that would come; she would return to better eating habits just as soon as she could manage the pain better.

Ensconced in the greyish silence of the lab, knowing that simulations are running to prove her success, Bella relaxes as best as she's able into a sleep of exhaustion more complete than the previous few nights combined. She does not dream - or if she does, she suspects that it is lost to the gnawing ache over her frontal and temporal lobes, oscillating around the back of her head and simmering in her brainstem. That she feels the pain even in sleep is - alarming.

More alarming, however, is the world in which she wakes. She knows, even before her eyes are fully open, that the night of dreamless sleep had not been the reprieve she deserved; rather, it had been the moment before the storm, where all was calm before calamity would strike.

 _Another episode_ , she notes distantly, somewhere beyond the pain and the noise and the trembling shake of her entire body as she surges into sudden awareness.

It's Laurent's irate voice that rouses her from slumber, his agitated mutterings about the lab settings breaking through the shocking pain wrapped tightly around her mind, both so distracting that Bella is lost under the onslaught. Sensation is distressingly too bright, too loud, her skin both chilled and taut with heat, but she claws at the inevitability of wakefulness anyway, muddled by pain that seems to radiate from every inch of her head.

" _-unbelievable, just when I get everything set just the way you know I like it, you have a slumber party in the lab and completely alter every level just to_ -"

"I'm sorry. I meant to reset everything," she murmurs, struggling to sit up, her elbows knocking against shallow ribs, breath coming too quickly. "If you could just quiet down."

"What - _what is she talking about, be quiet? I'm quiet as a mouse, everyone says so, it's actually kind of my worst quality according to my brother, that jerk, and-"_ Laurent cuts off abruptly and Bella blinks under the harsh lights, a moment passing before she realizes he's looking at her, expression unreadable. " _Bella."_

"Yes, what?" she groans, pressing her palm to her overheated forehead, strands of short hair clumping around the nape of her neck and temples. She feels absolutely miserable.

 _"I'm not talking,"_ Laurent says and she can almost hear his mental gears grinding as he pieces _something_ together -

And right around the time she realizes that his mouth wasn't moving - hadn't been moving since she'd woken up, and that she can still hear a stream of his voice directly in her ear - a too-warm rivet slips over her lips, salt and copper sharp on her tongue.

Her nose is bleeding.

Laurent rushes forward, this time calling her name, his full lips moving in the same rapid pattern that she can't hear - she doesn't know anything besides the pain and the iron dripping from her nose and the rushing zoom of noise, of voices, buzzing in her ears like a hoard of angry bees -

" _Oh God, oh God._ Bella _. Bella! Oh, God! She needs -_ get you to the hospital _\- those lab results - what was she doing - d_ on't go to sleep, Bella _-"_

Bella's mind explodes under a crescendo of incomprehensible agony.


	6. Issue No 1:6

**6.**

 **Cardiff, Wales - 2194**

Edward's last day of work at the pub starts off with rutting rain crashing down unforgivingly on his shoulders, a late alarm from his second-hand tablet, and with Emile waiting at the pub's back door, huddled dejectedly in his flamboyantly bright rain jacket that doesn't seem to be doing much to keep Emile dry.

"You look like a drowned show dog, you do," Edward says as he darts up the graduated walk, deftly avoiding a puddle the size of a small country. He furrows his brows at Emile, distracted and tired and so _ready to be out of Cardiff_. "Why're you standing out here, mate?"

"Lost the key, didn't I? Obviously," Emile sniffs, hugging himself tighter under the scant refuge of the building overhang. "Was hoping you'd still have your copy."

Edward pushes hair off his forehead, slicking it back with a frown. "Turned it in at closing," he says, and it's mostly the truth, even though Edward honestly _never_ carries a key around.

What's the point when he can get in anywhere he likes with the simple twist of a metal lock? The key to the pub had been sitting in a drawer in his flat for months and the day before was the first time Edward had touched it since the day he was hired; now, that key was probably on the bar counter, waiting for the owner to pick it up.

" _Great_ ," Emile groans, hanging his head. "Just perfect. What are we to do now?"

Edward's gaze turns calculating as he assesses the situation. Emile had been nothing short of ordinary since Edward had decided to quit and over the last week or so, Edward had come to the conclusion that he - and Winston - were _too paranoid_. Suspecting _Emile_ of, what? Reporting him to the government? It was a ridiculous idea, even if moving out of Cardiff wasn't. It was time to move on and since it was his last day -

What was the harm? It wasn't as if Emile had purposefully forgotten his key to create a situation in which Edward would be forced to use his abilities. That was some kind of James Bond plot device that people like Emile didn't have the time to think up, especially when they put as much work into their clothing as Emile obviously does. Edward highly doubts that Emile would willingly ruin an outfit to catch him using his powers.

"Lucky for you," Edward hears himself saying with an edge of mirthful humor. "I've always been good at picking locks."

 _Which is why I don't carry a key around, but you don't need to know that, do you?_

"Oh, yeah?"

Edward shrugs a shoulder, taking Emile's tight tone as discomfort due to weather more than anything else. "I've got a bit of a sweet tooth and the nuns always frowned on that sort of thing. Was always getting caught with treats, you know? Finally smartened up and gorged on sugar in rooms that were supposed to be locked. Nuns never caught me again."

Emile laughs, strained, and Edward ignores him, peering at the fairly standard lock. He's familiar with it, of course, but if he's going to pretend to pick the lock, he should probably make it a show. Yawning, he nudges his coworker to the side.

Emile straightens, leaning against the building to make room as Edward crouches beside the backdoor, reaching for the impossibly thin chain - his own work - hanging around his neck and the narrow, flat-edged piece of metal attached to it. The metal piece was technically a lock-pick, or would at least work in place of one to the untrained eye, but Edward had never used it for such a task. He really just liked the resonance of the metal and frequently played around with the shape; last week, the same piece of metal had been a circle, the week before a nail, and at one time an openwork four-leaf clover. He's lucky that the shape was so similar to a lock-pick now, because Edward wasn't sure what he'd do if it hadn't been - distract Emile while he worked?

It's nothing - a mere beginner's magic trick - to stick the pin into the lock and use his metal sense to push _up, over, down_ until the lock clicks. He jiggles the needle for show as he works, but doesn't put too much effort into faking it.

"Ta-da," he mutters, opening the door with a jaunty wave of his hand, fingers twisted around the doorknob, yawning again and completely missing the smug shadow that passes over Emile's face.

"Thank _God_ ," Emile says with feeling, hurrying into the dry pub as Edward tucks his chain back under the collar of his shirt, the metal pin just slightly warm against his chilled skin.

He's maybe too overconfident that he's home-free and later, he'll think about all the things he did wrong and _this_ will be the moment his mind will trip over because _this_ is the moment that sealed his fate.

But Edward doesn't know that, won't know that until it's too late.

And blimey, isn't that always how it goes?


	7. Issue No 1:7

**7.**

 **Manhattan, New York - 2194**

To say that Bella had been born extraordinarily gifted would be an understatement of gargantuan proportions. Aside from the markedly obvious intelligence she'd displayed at a young age and particularly serviceable memory, Bella's early childhood was one of slight peculiarities, patterns that were just odd enough to strike curiosity into the heart of her father while he'd still had an interest in his daughter. From the seldom viewed vids documenting the first months of Bella's existence - she has them memorized, there's no need to revisit the dusty disks - it was clear the exact moment when her father's interest turned from paternal into scientific, much to her mother's apparent exasperation.

 _"There's nothing wrong with her,_ " her mother would say, voice a gentle clip of English accent to rival the more languid tones of her husband, who she looks to beyond the camera with a humorous glint in her grey gaze. " _She's a perfectly normal child. A true beauty, aren't you? Yes, you are…"_

Charles Swan would sigh behind the lens, the camera tilting slightly as he offers endless counterarguments. " _She doesn't cry. All the books indicate that infants do little else but cry, especially in the night, and I know that both of us are logging our usual hours of sleep,"_ he'd point out, not unkindly, perfectly reasonable. " _I was in my office this afternoon and, out of the blue, I was struck by the notion that our daughter was hungry, Renee. You said the other day that you woke up to change her without her making a sound. That's remarkable, there must be something…"_

And in each vid, her mother would look to Bella, stroke a slender finger down a flushed cheek, and murmur about how special Bella was, about how much she was loved, about how she was destined for a great future. But it was undeniable that her father was right, that there was something a bit - _off_ about her infancy. In all the vids, in all the pictures, even in Constance's fond recollections, Bella was an abnormally silent baby - she rarely cried, and even then, she was quickly soothed. There were a few logs made prior to her mother's death where her father obviously tried to keep track of all the unexplainable instances of himself or his wife suddenly attending to the needs of their child without any obvious signs that the child was in need.

His suspicions drop off immediately after Renee Swan passes from the world, tumors rotting every essence of life from the inside out. A disease so inescapably ruthless that not even Charles Swan's brilliance can stop it.

Her exceptional memory makes it impossible to escape certain pivotal points of her life, just as it is impossible for Bella to forget anything she's read, seen, or heard. It's a curse as much as a blessing, one that she has made peace with and used to her advantage as much as possible.

But stress brings up the worst of those recollections, and so Bella remembers her father's exact phrasing - just as nuanced now as when he spoke them then - on the day of her mother's burial.

" _There is nothing philosophical about death,_ " he'll say with a terse cadence to his words that Bella comes to know as normal and expected and coldly detached. " _There is nothing after this life. Nothing. You are here or you aren't. And she's not, so stop crying._ "

Bella did stop crying, ever-obedient, clinging to the one parent she had left - and, as she will understand later, failing. Charles died the same day Renee did, and both of them left Bella to fend for herself.

She knew though, clever as a child and more clever now, that there was always a possibility that she would inherit something from her mother that wasn't as benign as the crystalline opal of her eyes or the accent of her voice - a damning quirk of genetics far more dangerous than any solar-radiated gene.

As Bella blinks up at the bright lights of the sterile hospital room, she feels something in her _break_ as the pieces slot together, symptoms she'd been denying all coalescing into one unavoidable truth. She vividly recalls the onset of her mother's symptoms, after all - the constant headache, the vertigo and nausea, the faint ring in her ears and the fatigue. Bella shatters inside and loses the shred of deniability she'd been grasping onto as the doctor enters the room, expression as grave as the news he delivers.

She nods in all the right places as the diagnosis is delivered, eyes locked onto the _SWANN_ logo etched onto the machine they scanned her with, the one that spit out the results that Bella had been dreading for a month, maybe more. It's horribly ironic that her death sentence is delivered in some way by her own father, the technology of the company he drowned himself in the only reason that they could even detect so many tiny shadows on her grey matter. With a grim sigh, she realizes that she knows the machine, too, had helped with the blueprints and used them to get into Columbia.

 _It was all very, very ironic, wasn't it? Like mother, like daughter - but like father, like daughter, too_.

The doctor, a handsomely aged man with an old-fashioned gold ring curled around his finger, seems confounded by her detachment as she receives the news. She's not sure how to tell him that she already _knew_ and that she had been hoping to avoid the confirmation for as long as possible, blissfully unaware of the disease eating at her brain as she kept herself medicated with drugs of her own design. She's almost positive the doctor wouldn't approve of the self-medication, and can't find it in herself to care.

She's dying. What does it matter, really?

"Do you have any questions?" he asks, eyes moving restlessly, clearly uncomfortable.

Bella tilts her head, raising a hand to press against the nasty pulse crisscrossing her temple. She can feel blood crusted over her upper lip, a spot missed by the nurse, and imagines she must look a fright with the front of her starched dress speckled in crimson and her expression carefully blank. "I assume I'll have access to my medical files outside of your facility," she states blandly, waiting for the doctor to nod his affirmative, crinkle to his brow. "Then, no. I've no questions about my diagnosis."

She can see that this - her acceptance, her dismissal - strikes him as odd, though as someone who had never been so _in tune_ with people, she isn't sure how she knows this. Maybe the good doctor's body language. It reminds her very faintly of the confusion when she woke up in the lab when she realized she could hear Laurent even though he wasn't talking.

Bella doesn't remember delusions being part of her mother's symptoms.

She could ask, of course. The doctor is slow leaving the room, almost as if he's unwilling to turn his back to her, but she keeps her mouth shut tightly, lips pressed together in a contemplative purse. Her head hurts less than before, though still painful, and maybe that's why she makes the intuitive leap that she does-

Because there's really only two explanations: either delusions hadn't had time to present in her mother's illness, or Bella wasn't suffering delusions. If it was the first, then Bella was prepared to accept the delusions for what they were. But if the explanation was the second, then Bella needed to get back to the lab _right away_.

Being a tad weak in the knees as her blood pressure struggled to return to equilibrium, Bella is careful as she walks through the clean white halls of Manhattan's best hospital, paying careful attention to the swarm of noises and imagery she'd been writing off for weeks. It was a comfortable - and welcome - transition into the pattern-smitten process of science rather than dwelling on her terminal diagnosis. A new distraction. A new hypothesis to test.

She mentally logs every emotion that isn't hers, every train of thought that would never cross her mind, every image that isn't the one she sees before her eyes. Her eyes rove for some sort of correspondence between what's in her head and what's around her, but it's all lost to the sheer mass of chaos in the hospital and the more she lets herself linger on these things that are not hers, the more Bella feels the need to leave the hospital. Her head aches fiercely again by the time she makes it to the waiting room and the rush of noise in her ears mellows just enough that she recognizes Laurent rushing toward her, concern writ plain as day on his smooth face.

"Bella!" he exclaims, reaching toward her. She lets him steady her balance, resigned to the idea that she would need help for more than just walking outside. "Are you okay? The medical staff wouldn't let me into the examinations with you, or let me know about your health - I'm not family - _and I wasn't sure if I should call your father, you don't talk about him ever even though the entire department knows who you are_ \- so I thought I would just wait - _it's been hours_ \- and hope for the best - _but something is telling me otherwise_ \- and that they would release you soon. So?"

She exhales heavily, mouth parted as she weighs the options. She could lie or she could tell the truth. One had more advantages than the other and the choice was clear. "Did you know my mother died of anaplastic astrocytoma when I was young? I seem destined to follow in the footsteps of my parents," she says woodenly, wincing against the shine of the sun cresting warmly between Manhattan towers and flying cars.

 _Oh, God_ , she hears, a whispering breath over her ears, too loud and too clear for the soft volume, as Laurent flinches, stumbles, then opens his mouth to stutter some platitude or another in the same tone. "I'm so - Bella, that's - are you - you'll be okay, right? Bella?"

Bella holds her head high, imperious and proud, and faces her lab partner head-on. "I'm not going to be okay, Laurent. After we look at my medical records, I'm sure we'll have a better understanding of the prognosis, but it's not going to be good and you need to accept that now because we have a lot of work to do and there's no time for either of us to have some sort of breakdown."

He adjusts his glasses, inhaling quickly three times in an effort to calm himself, and then blinks as he wipes a hand over his face. "We?"

"I need your help," she tells him, and to her relief she sounds - normal. Like herself. Soft-spoken and unassuming, but resilient. She holds onto that feeling with as much strength as she can muster. "You need to verify the synthetic compound the simulations approved last night and help me with the delivery system of -"

"Wait, wait," Laurent says, waving his hands in the air. "Give me a second to get this straight. You just received the worst possible news anyone could ever get and you want to go back to the lab. To make that super secret drug I know you've been working on - _obviously I noticed her sleeping in the lab_ \- so you can, what, take it untested?"

"Precisely."

"You're insane," he claims, boarding hysterical.

Bella raises her brows. "I need your help with that, too."

" _What_."

"I might be suffering delusions," she says, turning away when Laurent makes a strangled sound in response. "Or I've spontaneously become telepathic. One or the other."

" _I_ might be suffering delusions," Laurent counters, a mutter under his breath that Bella probably isn't supposed to hear. He exhales and then speaks louder. "Scientific curiosity never stops, does it? I've always wondered about the experiments they did back in the Third War, you know the ones with the - oh, _what_ did they call it - the special word they had for the code breakers -"

"The Keys," Bella supplies, a furrow in her brow. She hadn't considered it, but the legendary Keys from the Third War _were_ similar to the possible-delusions she'd been suffering - but of course she _wouldn't_ consider what is widely regarded as war-time propaganda to cover up whatever unsavory means were used to end the war. Nobody, as far as she knew, considered the Keys to be real. They were something straight out of ancient fables, people who could pry into places - physical and mental - where they weren't necessarily welcome, people who got secrets and results and wore white hats at the same time.

"- _right_ , the Keys - anyway, I've always wondered if they were real, you know, and especially with all this extrahuman news cropping up -"

 _Another possibility_ , Bella thinks grimly. _Or perhaps one in the same, which isn't much better_.

Bella doesn't know anyone at Columbia Science who is able to extrapolate data as well as Laurent, which is particularly useful to her on most days, especially when they're doing joint experiments that apply to each of their theses - but his astounding ability to jump from hypothesis to conclusion is the only way she is able to maintain her grasp on reality. Delusion or not, as they ride in a taxi on street level back to the lab - after Laurent has protested and argued that _Bella, you should rest, you just got out of the hospital_ \- Bella finds herself latching onto the smooth cadence of Laurent's exceedingly logical and conversely whimsical thoughts.

His thoughts - if they _really_ are his thoughts - are like a balm. She doesn't linger on how odd that is, but she also doesn't question why her own thoughts _aren't_ calming. They never have been. She sees no reason that it should change now.

 _If this is telepathy,_ she finds herself thinking hours later, watching idly as Laurent re-runs her simulations, as the machinery in the lab liquidates a powdery compound she'd perfected, watches as it crystallizes into wonderfully smooth, clear, round tablets. _If this is telepathy, then it is settling very quickly. Is it the same for the extrahumans - the others?_

A staggering question and one that she contemplates with more focus as she draws her own blood, handing a vial off to Laurent because though her degrees consult genetics often enough, _Laurent_ is the geneticist looking into the supposed gene responsible for extrahuman mutations. If Bella believed in coincidences, she would have been relieved to know an expert in the field that could hopefully confirm or deny her suspicions - but as it stands, she is cautiously optimistic that Laurent knew enough to look for the right markers in her blood.

"The Swedes insist that the genetic markers are found in _this_ section of DNA, see? Right here," Laurent says as the holographic display rotates with the smudged lines of Bella's genes, magnified enough that the resolution of the screen is proving inadequate. Laurent's hand passes through the display, twisting her chromosomes every which way as he squints behind his glasses. "But I disagree. If we were looking for a mutation - and there's no way this _isn't_ a mutation, though caused by what I've no idea - but a mutation wouldn't be in the middle…It would be at the end, see?"

Bella stands, hand pressed to her temple as if the warmth of her palm could block out the pulse of an ever-growing headache. She's impatient for her tablets to finish cooling, but not so impatient that she's not paying attention to Laurent's brilliance - because she does see exactly what he's talking about.

It's strangely beautiful, this extra gene that's allowing her to hear thoughts.

She says as much and Laurent snorts. "You're taking all of this very well," he says, still studying her DNA with the type of intensity she feels honored to have directed at her.

Bella sits down on their lab bench, cradles her chin in her hands. "I always knew mother's illness could become mine," she tells him, slow and soft. "My father thought it was important I understand. He explained it in great detail when I was old enough to ask. And we're scientists, Laurent, we do not fear death."

"There's nothing after life," he agrees, hands falling away from the display. Though the tenor of his thoughts are generally compassionate, Laurent refrains from comforting her, much to his credit.

She smiles, a quirk to the corner of her lips, a grim shadow of expression. "I've already accepted my sickness. It isn't curable, isn't operational, and we've seen the scans, haven't we? Quite a few more than mother had, to be honest," she says, then gestures at the holo screen. "But this? A bit harder to swallow. I have a mutated gene that's somehow causing telepathy, which is only manifesting now that tumors are pressing the right buttons in my brain. What will that mean in a month? In two months? Does it accelerate the illness? Or is the mutation the cause of the illness?"

So many questions. And very likely not enough time to answer any of them with a degree of satisfaction.

Laurent moves to sit beside her, knees pulled up to his chest as his expression crumples in deep thought. "I'm not sure," he answers, casting a considering glance at the screen. "If your mother had the same illness, then did she also have the same mutation? We have no way of knowing, really, what causes the mutation. Evolution? Environment?"

They both know what the Swedes have claimed in the last week - that if humans were exposed to enough solar radiation, it was entirely possible that mutations could occur on the genetic level and present in humans possessing susceptible genomes. It's a plausible hypothesis, especially with the accusations that the satellite shields had failed during the Great Flare, during the Third War. If the shields had continued failing after the first massive exposure -

It's a _very_ plausible hypothesis.

"Keep testing," she says after a moment, standing and slumping over to her work station, to the cooling tablets that promised an escape from the constant pain. "I want to know if I'm radioactive."

"I hope not. We're out of gloves and I haven't been following safe lab procedure," Laurent quips, tone forcefully cheerful as tension bleeds through the lab.

The day is long.

She has the wild notion that this unfortunate disease was destined for Bella to strike gold _twice_ in the scientific community and in the legacy she would leave behind - one for her augmented pain medication, and other for secondary genetic factors to the development of extrahuman abilities.

Laurent insists on testing her medication on mice first - which is a success, thankfully, as it means that Bella is able to slip a tablet beneath her tongue less than twelve hours after leaving the hospital. A pressure over her brain that she can decisively associate with the astrocytoma - the tumors - is alleviated, which is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because her shoulders straighten from the defensive hunch she'd adopted and she is able to move around the lab without inviting painful wincing for the first time in _months_. But a curse because sounds filter in without hesitation and if Bella had any lingering doubts about the results of Laurent's genetic inquiry - well.

Bella is _definitely_ hearing thoughts - and not just thoughts on the surface, anymore.

 _Telepathic and dying_ , Laurent thinks to himself, heavy with irony as he combs through data results, searching for _something_ to reveal a silver lining that isn't there. _It isn't fair._

Bella listens, fingers pressed to temples, emotion shuddering over her spine like pin-pricks, body free from pain but inundated with extra sensation that she can scarcely process as it washes over her with increasing urgency - sound - sight - emotion - none that belong to her -

She laughs until she cries.


	8. Issue No 1:8

**8.**

 **Cardiff, Wales - 2194**

 _Damn_.

Edward stumbles as the bullet rips into his shoulder, shredding muscle and tissue and rocketing through his center of gravity with such unbelievable efficiency that he just barely catches himself against the dull brick of a heavily-shadowed shop. He reaches for his shoulder automatically, hand closing around the knob of joint _just there_ , and shudders, trying to staunch the inevitable blood flow.

 _He's been shot_.

"Bloody hell," he curses, casting a glance over his shoulder to ascertain where the _sodding bullet_ came from. He'd been walking back from the corner shop, innocent as can please, minding his own business the way all people should - and especially Edward, being what he is. The last thing he ever wanted to do was draw attention to himself. This was both an insurance policy and a self-bound rule of his existence. _Be normal, or at least look it if you're not_.

And now, with a bullet in his shoulder, hot blood spreading in a nasty splotch beneath his thin jumper and sturdy bomber jacket, that imposing rule was shattered, lost in a spray of crimson agony.

He's just been shot - in _Wales_ , of all places.

And on _moving day_ of all days.

Edward's eyes are weakened by the relative darkness that dusk offered and he cannot see much beyond the empty street, cars hunkered comfortably along the walkways and streetlights a warm glow spreading across carefully paved roads. He doesn't see anything - or anyone - and for a prolonged moment, stands dumbly in the shadow, trying to figure out how he was shot with nobody holding a gun in sight.

His brows draw together, and he reaches into the darkness with the sense that is more powerful than his sight, the one that leads his attention to the smooth buttons of his fly, to the curve of the doorknob near his spine, to the alloys of the cars down the street - and to the rigidly constructed metal hiding behind a lip of brick and plaster of the rooftop on the building across from where he's standing.

A sniper, then. And either a terrible one, or one with remarkable aim, depending on whether or not the sniper was actually trying to kill Edward, which he hopes isn't likely. He lives as far under the radar as possible, but someone obviously knows about him. Snipers aren't sent to shoot random chaps. It's just not done.

He _feels_ the smooth glide of a bullet sliding into the chamber of the sniper rifle and realizes that he's about to be shot _again_ \- unless he does something about it. Never one for hesitation, Edward claws at the shape of the gun, gritting his teeth as he pushes his range and _bends_ \- bends the rifle until it is nothing more than a broken toy, one that won't be functional ever again.

Between the push beyond his natural range - it was too far, so much further than anything he's attempted before - and the seep of blood across his chest, Edward is almost too tired to move. He's distracted, his eyes fluttering as he exhales heavily in exhaustion, the grip on his shoulder slackening.

The distraction is what costs him. He doesn't sense metal encroaching, speeding just as quickly as a bullet, but more quiet - he doesn't know what's coming for him until the pin of a dart embeds itself into his neck. A wave of near-instantaneous artificial dizziness sweeps through his body, and Edward loses his balance, knees hitting pavement, followed swiftly by his bloody shoulder, and then the side of his head.

It hurts but distantly, because Edward is rapidly losing consciousness. But not so fast that he hasn't realized what's just happened to him - or what's about to.

His last thought before the drugged onset of unconsciousness is that _he's just given them proof of what he is_ and _bollocks._


	9. Issue No 1:9

**9.**

 **Manhattan, New York - 2195**

New Year's Eve in New York had always been a majestic time for Bella.

The city, already quintessential year-round, becomes a visceral, _live_ thing of lights and celebration that has always pulled at Bella. A people-watcher by nature, she is usually enthralled by the mood of New York as January approaches, a thrumming sense of inevitable rebirth breathing into the clean atmosphere between skyscrapers and flying cars - and it always seems that, for at least a moment, the world is not so large, not so frighteningly real outside the hushed walls of academia. The holidays feel like the only time where Bella can connect, even shallowly, with other people, which she has struggled with as she is too smart for her age-peers, and too young for her intellectual ones.

Christmastime was a free pass to simply be _Bella_. Or, rather, it had been.

When her mother was alive, the family would gather in Times Square, her father resolutely disconnected from the lab and the empire he built, and there was warmth and happiness and snow on her nose as her parents kissed sweetly. After, for a few years at least, Charles Swan still took the day off from work and though the celebration was more subdued, he was still _there_ and there was still snow and warmth. He stopped the tradition when Bella began college, but she continued in her own way, huddling around a holoscreen and remembering the feel of snow on her cheeks, remembering her mother's laugh and the scent of her father's cologne.

This New Year is decidedly different.

She spends the day - and rather the entire week beforehand - avoiding Laurent's continuing campaigns to sway her toward treatment, Constance's worrisome comments over her lack of appetite, and the decided absence of her father's acknowledgement after skipping their meeting and not receiving even a cursory attempt at contact. Though her head no longer aches in the agony of tumors shredding neural connections with the kind of slow vindictiveness that only terminal illness can manage, Bella still feels the _pressure_ of voices, images, thoughts-

There is a certain pressure, a swarm of barrage sensation, that Bella can associate with telepathy, now. A subtle squeeze, a pull to _pay attention to this now this now this now this_ that she hasn't ever experienced, not even in the height of her most ambitious scientific ventures, fueled by caffeine and ambition in equal measure. Often, even in the sanctuary of her room, the sheer volume of noise makes her dizzy and anxious, nails pulling at fabric and skin and hair as she sorts through hundreds of thoughts that don't belong to her, palms pressed to ears as an ineffectual attempt to block some of it out.

But thoughts are not as easily ignored as sound. This is true for her own thoughts, and the thoughts of anyone wandering through her agonizingly large range - a mile or less, she thinks, which doesn't _seem_ so bad until she takes a moment to calculate the population packed into that measurement.

Day and night pass with _noise_ , unending, unrelenting, and unforgiving - and for Bella, trapped in this everlong of exposure, it is akin to the afterboom of explosions, a constant ringing through her ears, a vibration of awareness drilling into her consciousness. When the telepathy is overwhelming, she actually has to focus on her _own_ breathing in panic, as if she could forget such a basic biological function under the mass of _sound_ that she just can't block out -

It might be worse than before. Almost.

She nearly regrets that her precious pain tablets are free of the kind of numbing side effects she now craves. Bella thinks she might give anything for a brief reprieve, wryly observing that the telepathy wasn't nearly as assaulting until she knew - definitively - that it existed. It was immensely unfair, right along with the fatigue and tiny nose bleeds in the morning that she knew were symptoms of astrocytoma.

Bella cannot escape reality in any sense. It doesn't leave much time for contemplating the implications of these recent - developments. In fact, when the telepathy isn't so overwhelming - scant moments just long enough to guzzle water and chew woodenly on protein bars, eyes bleary and mind bruised - she thinks of nothing besides finding away to _control_ this damnable ability she's managed to manifest. Her ideas are decidedly lacking.

She doesn't dare hope that she has any grasp on the telepathy until the dawning morning of New Year's Eve, when she visualizes a bubble around her own mind, a barrier that works to muffle thoughts that don't belong to her - and it is blissful for the moment it lasts -

Until Bella drops back onto her pillows with a sigh and useless first editions of literary classics fly off the shelf above her bed, landing in bruising thumps against her knees, as if saying _now try to control me_.

Bella, who is not prone to crying as a general rule, spends half an hour sobbing in dismay as various knick-knacks in her room float over her head and a fresh wave of thoughts crumble the fragile bubble around her mind.

She doesn't know what it means, her nerves raw and hands shaking as she fumbles to place items back into their correct places, only to repeat the process over and over again as her mental shield falters. Of all the rumors she has heard about extrahumans, she hadn't ever heard of rumors of one with more than one ability - and she worries that maybe there is something wrong with her, besides the obvious. There's certainly no way to test if she's particularly abnormal, though she knows - _from skimming Laurent's thoughts the last time she saw him, weeks ago right after the hospital, and his thoughts had been so relieving glacial -_ that science, that her own lab partner, would eventually pin down an answer to such questions. Undoubtedly, Laurent was one of a handful of qualified scientists the world over that had already begun researching the topic in depth.

As her nose bleeds sluggishly that morning, she wonders if this new ability - telekinesis, no doubt - is in any way linked to the astrocytomas. It's her working theory that the tumors are engaging the neurons associated with the mutated genes, if indeed such a thing can be tracked to specific areas of the brain; it could mean that Bella developing a secondary mutation was evidence that at least one tumor had grown. A strange thought.

 _Would the abilities become more uncontrollable the more terminal her condition became? Or would she continue to develop new abilities with every new growth blooming malignantly in her brain?_

Bella loses concentration shortly after those thoughts occur to her, eyes squeezed shut as various objects thump against walls and as Bella becomes intimately acquainted with the myriad of the human minds meandering outside of her once-safe haven.

It's hell on Earth.

Hell lasts through Christmas, an entire week and a half of her room in disarray, of Constance's worried calls through the firmly locked door, of Bella skipping meals and bleeding and crying - until, finally, she manages to hold onto a mental shield, a firm bubble protecting her mind from the onslaught, for a full half-hour.

Then, it's easier. She learns quickly that the trick to keeping that bubble around her mind is to think of it like _breathing_ \- or rather, think of it as an inevitable and unavoidable biological function that is second-nature, not something that she should concentrate on. She learns that the bubble is flimsy, more similar to the fragile netting of a spider web than anything else, but also impenetrable, and that if she wants to, she can hone in on a single mind with a clumsy sort of selectivity.

The telekinesis is manageable after that, too, especially once she realizes that it is linked more closely to her emotions than the telepathy. She views them with the same kind of cool scientific calculation that she views the world with, and denotes that the telepathy is similar to the involuntary muscles of her heart, but that the telekinesis is akin to the voluntary movements of her hands. Control for both is - thankfully - within Bella's grasp on New Year's Eve and she can finally _think_.

Her thoughts lead to generally displeasing revelations, particularly in light of the recent global developments regarding all the extrahumans exposing themselves to scrutiny. There are as many claims of extrahuman thieves as there are of extrahuman heroes - and governments across the globe are taking notice. It reminds Bella fiercely of the historical accounts of the Keys, those fabled war-tools, and she wonders more on Laurent's observations as she hides away in her room.

 _"These extrahumans are the puppets of chaos!"_

" _They're our saviors! Look, when was the last time a normal human - a normie - risked their lives by going into burning buildings? It's been at least a century -"_

 _"And how do we not know that this mutated freak didn't set the fire in the first place? To get the attention, to wreak havoc?"_

She flips off the news and, consequently, the coverage of the New York ball-drop with a queasy stomach, biting her lip anxiously, furious as she paces around the confines of her room. She feels an uncharacteristic flare of burning-hot anger, a distinct sort of rage that curls her fingers into tight fists, glass breaking in the wake of her conflicting emotions.

Bella exhales sharply, counting to ten, waiting until the beat of her heart slows to a manageable pulse, anger clearing from her mind. She'd never been inclined to strong emotions before, she knows, and she sees no reason that should change now -

Even though it is abundantly clear that these extrahumans need a public face.

Not that that face should be _Bella_. She was already too public, being the heiress of a billion-dollar corporation, and in fact the absolute last thing she needed to do was draw attention to the fact that _something_ had changed in her life. Which she's doing a rather poor job of, actually, hiding in her room like she is, carefully cowering away from the world.

She sits down, suddenly overcome by the precise reality of her situation.

What had she done with her life? Had she ever really _lived_ , ever really been daring, ever took a chance that wasn't guaranteed? Seventeen with two degrees that she mostly obtained out of spite, never-been-kissed, and now _dying_ with tumors rotting her brain and her sanity in equal turns. She hadn't done anything of import, except for develop a slightly-better version of an invention that had already revolutionized medicine once before; certainly, she'd never done anything _worthwhile_.

And now there was this - _the mutation_ , the voices, the objects flying off the shelves, and the horrible sense that she had unwittingly become part of a population that wasn't very popular at all. The irony was stark, of course. She who had done nothing save poor attempts at proving herself to a parent who could care less was suddenly in the unwitting possession of a fate that would kill her twice over.

Tears burn at the back of her eyes and Bella doesn't know if they are from sadness or frustration. She's not sure it matters, even as she hears the clamor of a thousand voices counting down to the New Year, even as she makes peace with the unavoidable fact that she, Bella Swan, was going to die in less than six months.

It wasn't a lot of time.

 _How do I want to spend the rest of my days? Locked in a lab or hiding from the world?_

Either way, she was sure to waste away in a daze of academia, waiting for the final damnation of symptoms to take away her cognizance, waiting for the day that words wouldn't translate to speech, waiting for the day when her exceptional memory would fail. Waiting until she was holed up in the best hospital suite money could buy, surrounded by antiseptic and flowers that were dying as quickly as she was.

She doesn't want that. She doesn't want to wait to die.

Bella wants to do _something_. She wants to live until she dies.

She wants to make a difference.

And that's exactly what she intends to do.


	10. Side Panel No 1: The Agent's Agent

**Side Panel No. 1: Emmett** **Ż** **ywiecki: The Agent's Agent**

As might be expected, the Third War changed the world - and not necessarily for the better, as far as Emmett was concerned. The war had certainly dismantled his family and, as it turns out, his entire life, which is probably the most significant part found in his military records.

A week-long rock-climbing trip with buddies over the summer break between high school and college and one forgotten explosive from World War Three wedged between two rocks on the side of a mountain had blown Emmett's leg off, completely altering Emmett in ways he couldn't comprehend at newly-nineteen. Ways that he wouldn't fully and painstakingly believe until there was a piece of cybernetic technology attached to his body.

Emmett had been angry and his broken family had stayed broken, just as broken as he was - just as hopeless as Emmett had been, dying on that damn mountain while he awaited rescue. If waking up in the hospital was difficult, the realization that the hospital's fancy machinery and highly educated doctors amputated his left leg below the knee had been hell on Earth. And the entire world had been so sure that SWANN had changed the fate of humanity for the better. What a joke.

For months, he would startle awake with an echoing _boom_ in his ears, reaching for a leg that wasn't there but hurt with searing phantom pains, sweat soaking the sheets around him.

Losing his leg wasn't part of the plan. Emmett learned not to care.

He enlisted with the Marines as soon as the agony of physical therapy was completed, his prosthetic - issued by global government as the shittiest _sorry we forgot about that terrorist bomb_ present Emmett had ever received - playing the part of understanding best friend while Emmett rebelled with a death wish the size of his ancestral home.

Not even Emmett had predicted how good he'd be as a Marine, lethal and objective and so well-suited that Special Ops had snatched him up before his first tour was done. And Special Ops had been - eye opening. Emmett thrived in the military environment, forgetting about his dead war-hero father, his drunk mother, his drug-addled sister, and sometimes even forgetting that his left leg was _gone_.

That's when the Agency - the single most important secretly government-sponsored collection of dangerous people that happened to be the result of the Third War as a way to stop history repeating itself - stepped in, plucking Emmett's talent and pitching a deal for global peace and intrigue that Emmett couldn't resist.

Espionage wasn't part of the plan, either.

Emmett rolled with the whole _spy_ shtick with the keen understanding that he was exceptionally gifted for the trade. Efficient, lethal, and non-descript appearances aside, Emmett's work ethic - which was honestly just an excuse to avoid dealing with his family _because there were some people who could not be saved_ \- catapulted him into the upper echelons of the Agency years before his peers.

Rosalie, loyal and frighteningly capable, once accused him of using the prosthetic as a secret tool upon returning from a mission that had gone south. Emmett had pulled up the hem of his black slacks, still smoking and slathered in soot, and poked at the gleaming blue metal cupped with silicone around his knee. "It's not like its armed, or anything."

That wasn't true, anymore, but Emmett kept that to himself even as his hip ached for weeks as he grew accustomed to the added weight hidden in the prosthetic. By the way Rosalie eyed his leg, he had a feeling she knew.

They didn't talk about it.

"Admiral Fletcher wants to see you," Rosalie says from his doorway, prim and proper as ever with her platinum hair pin-straight and as unruffled as the cardigan buttoned up to her neck, pristine white collar peeking out sharply from beneath knitted royal blue. She has a stylus tucked behind her ear, holding a tablet perfectly horizontal to the floor. Emmett thinks she looks like something out of a dream, but he'd never say it aloud. She probably knew, anyway, just like she knew most things about Emmett.

Emmett leans back in his chair, faintly curious. He'd met Fletcher once or twice during debriefs, but that had been months ago and after his most recent injury - three gut-shots from an old fashioned rifle that Emmett had been lucky enough to survive - he hadn't been on any missions. He couldn't imagine why the Agency's lead Admiral would want to see him, of all people.

"Did he say why?"

Rosalie smiles wryly. "Level Nine," she says, tapping the surface of the tablet once. "I don't have the clearance."

Emmett raises his brows. "Neither do I."

Highly unusual. The Agency didn't make a habit of bringing agents in on intel they didn't have clearance for - just like they didn't make a habit of promoting clearance levels out of the blue. Whatever this was, Emmett had a feeling it had been in the works for a while.

But why tap _him_? Emmett wasn't ashamed to admit that he was the type of agent that was sent in to keep things clean before they got dirty - strike before stricken, as it were. The Agency hadn't ever chosen him for _delicate_ work, especially operations that called for subtle hands or long-cons. And he didn't think he was off the mark with his assumption that this _would_ be an operation Emmett was ill-suited for; as far as the Agency was concerned, Emmett still had another month of physical therapy before he was cleared by Medical.

"You'd better hustle," Rosalie says placidly. "The notification was marked urgent."

Emmett sighs, standing without a wince, thank God. "Of course. And you didn't think to mention this before?"

Rosalie's smile is sly. "Didn't I?"

Emmett has no idea why he likes this woman so much - he's relatively sure she's a sadistic harpy on her best days, and completely positive that he's her favored target on her worst days. Probably some psychological dysfunction that marked Emmett's psyche evaluations in red ink.

The Agency HQ is - a maze, to put it in a word. A dizzying maze of grey walls and panic rooms hidden behind potted plants, void of office chatter outside of the cafeteria, and utterly under surveillance. Emmett has trained himself to not look at the cameras, though he's aware of each one, and he knows that Admiral Fletcher is probably watching his accent to the top of HQ's tower. Just the thought of being watched makes Emmett fall into parade rest, hands clasped behind his back, expression wiped of emotion just like back in his Marine days.

He's not nervous _. Rosalie_ makes him nervous. Summons from the Admiral make him wary, especially after his deductions. But he's an Agent and he knew when he signed up that this was a for-life occupation - and Emmett was ready and willing to step up to any challenge the Agency saw fit to throw his way.

It was better than going home.

"Sir."

"At ease," Fletcher says as Emmett stands in his office, waving a hand carelessly in the air, as if shooing away Emmett's military training. Which, considering what Emmett has heard about Fletcher's beginnings as an _assassin_ in the Third War, makes sense. Assassins, as Emmett has learned, are only sanctioned by the military until they know too many secrets.

Fletcher certainly looks like a man who fought through the Third War, still rippling with muscle and a healthy complexion, skin creased with the barest of wrinkles, but scarred over one half of his face, from nose to hairline to ear with a nasty, poorly-healed war wound. He's dressed in pressed slacks and an equally starched button-down that Emmett knows is made of a similar Kevlar-weave of his own clothes, though Fletcher has eschewed some manner of propriety by rolling his sleeves up to the elbow.

Fletcher nods to one of the chairs situated a good deal away from his desk, which Emmett sits in stiffly, watching the Admiral out of the corner of his eye as the other man takes the second chair. With his right hand - two fingers left, the thumb and pointer - Fletcher flicks some unseen command and the window in front of the chairs turns opaque.

"You seen these videos, Agent Z-er…"

"Emmett is fine," says Emmett. His last name is something of a nightmare. He doesn't mind informality.

Fletcher nods, turning his attention to the window-turned-vid screen. "You seen these videos, then, Agent Emmett? Seen what's happening out in the world now?"

Emmett watches the screen for a moment, watches as the videos cycle through various news casts covering the extrahuman insurgents and the shakier footage of extrahumans caught using their mutations. He isn't sure what Fletcher is looking for - whether Emmett is supposed to be indignant or compassionate - and so he settles for neutral. "Yes," he answers simply.

It's true, too. He's seen all the videos before. He'd even obsessed over the story of an extrahuman who regrew her own limb after a freak accident, his own leg aching something fierce as the story was told from all perspectives. He understood the fascination with these extrahumans, but didn't understand why the Agency was interested.

Unless - unless the extrahumans were a danger to the global population.

Which Emmett didn't think was possible.

Admiral Fletcher watches the videos with detached interest, exuding the kind of air of someone who'd seen everything there was to see, the kind of air of someone who could never be surprised. "And what do you think of these mutants?"

"They're just people," Emmett replies without hesitation. "Some good, some bad, but still just human."

The office is silent and Emmett is _sure_ he'd answered wrong. He's sure he's given an answer that goes directly against the Agency and whatever policy they're cooking up about extrahumans - and he isn't sure, for the first time since becoming _Agent Emmett_ , that he'd be willing to compromise his own morals for the Agency or the sake of global peace.

"Good," Fletcher says, flicking off the video and standing, striding from the chair to the desk, picking up a tablet and transferring the information on the slim computer onto the holoscreen. Emmett is a bit surprised to see his own picture staring back at him. "I've read your file, Agent. You're good. Deadly, but good. You don't question your handlers, you don't go off-mission protocol, and hell, you even turn in your paperwork on time. Good agents are rare, you know, but exceptional agents never come around.

"Except for you," Fletcher muses, pulling up another file that is simply marked _Initiative: Clearance Nine_. "I have to tell you, son, that I've seen some shit in my day. Thought for sure the Third War was the end of the end, but it wasn't. Instead, it was the end of the beginning. We've been receiving information from governments about this Great Flare, notices from scientists tracking the cause of these mutations and - It's occurred to me that we could potentially have a big problem on our hands."

Emmett stands, peering at the screen, marveling silently at the wealth of information _right there_ \- answers to questions he'd been wondering about, answers to questions the world has been salivating to know. And _he's_ being allowed access. "What does this have to do with the Agency?" he asks, looking to the Admiral with a furrow in his brow.

Admiral Fletcher smiles, all teeth. "Funny you should ask."


	11. Side Panel No 2: The Dynamic Duo

**Side Panel No. 2: Jane and Alec: San Francisco's (Reluctant) Dynamic Duo**

The talents hit the twins with a whammy, like a wrecking ball sent to demolish the world as they know it and uproot them from their comfortable lives. One day, the twins are normal - and the next, their entire place in society, in life, is flipped sideways, turned on its ear, completely and absolutely _screwed_.

They first notice something amiss when Jane sneezes and ends up in the next room, still holding a spoonful of sugary cereal in the grip of her fingers and blinking at her surroundings, at the news scrolling along the bottom of the living room vid screen. From the kitchen, Alec shouts in surprise - or maybe panic - and calls her name frantically.

"In here," she calls back, eyes locked onto the screen where some blogger is raving about something called _extrahumans_ with a backdrop of sketchy video behind him - and she thinks _I'm in the living room_ , a bit numb.

She hadn't been in the living room before. She'd been in the kitchen, shoveling cereal into her mouth that wasn't approved by the strict diet her coaches and parents enforced with prejudice, and daring her twin to say anything about it as he manfully ate something made of bran that looked like cardboard. Her nose had tickled in that tell-tale way - _allergies to Alec's bullshit,_ she usually claimed - and she'd sneezed, squeezing her eyes closed - and then…she was in the living room.

Jane blinks again, the cereal in her mouth turning to ash.

Alec thunders into the room, knocking over a vase and wincing at the crash of glass on gleaming vintage pine floors. His face is ashen, eyes to big and bright as he reaches for Jane with clammy hands. He shakes her shoulders just a bit, standing in front of the screen enough that Jane can only see the blogger's red face as speaks with more and more paranoid passion, vitriol and sputum. "What just happened? You- you _disappeared!_ Jane!"

She drops the spoon, listening to the clatter, feeling the splash of skim milk on her toes. Jane shakes her head, points at the screen and the blogger waving his hands over his head. A wave of nausea washes over her, and she pushes down the instinct to purge everything from her stomach. The illicit sugary cereal she'd been so cocky about sneaking into the house is a cloying taste clogging the back of her throat and she wishes - irrationally - that she'd never even set eyes on the colorful puffs in the first place.

As if it was the _cereal_ that made her -

"I think I'm in trouble," Jane says, swallowing heavily.

Because Jane, for all her faults, had never been one to stew in denial. The truth is right under her nose and she's right. She hates that she's right, but she is. She's in trouble because she's not the same as she was the day before. She's different. Extra. _Not_ _human_.

She has a fleeting hope that Alec will be spared - because she doesn't think he's _built_ for this, not the way she is - but it's futile. The twins had shared nearly everything their entire lives, genders-specific developments not-withstanding. They said their first words on the same day, took their first steps together, broke the same bones, had the same illnesses within days of each other - and this _manifestation_ would be no different, she was dreadfully sure of it.

Jane isn't surprised when only a few hours later during an intensive practice at the gym, Alec misses the grip of the uneven bars, shouts in surprise, and promptly freezes the room. Everyone but Jane, stuck perfectly still in time, and Alec on his knees, eyes wide and chest heaving in panic for the second time that day. The twins share a look, sweat at their hairlines from the rigorous workout, and come to a silent decision - _nobody can ever know_.

They don't tell their parents. It's nothing new, really; beyond their athletic accomplishments, the twins know that their parents don't care to know anything about the lives of their children, which suits just fine given the unsettling circumstances of the - developments.

But it doesn't matter.

It becomes clear very soon - too soon - that Alec is incapable of acting normally, not that Jane is any better. They both know nothing good is going to come out of this, not with the news being what it is with rapidly growing reports of the _extrahumans_ trickling into public knowledge, sensationalized to the point that Jane and Alec freeze up when it's mentioned casually over the tense dinner table.

"Whole bunch of freaks, if you ask me," says their father.

Their mother agrees. "All this nonsense is affecting the stocks for the company. I spent all day in my office mitigating this _disaster_. You'd think the government would step in…"

She does her best to keep her expression neutral, but she can see the naked fear in her twin's eyes - knows that he is constantly fretting about his spastic movements stopping time and worrying that the next time Jane coughs, he won't be able to find her. She has the same fears, because unlike Alec, she's thought a bit more about the logistics of what's happening to them and knows that it's a very real possibility that Alec could accidentally end up trapped in a different time altogether, leaving her behind.

It's a concern they both share, as they share all things. Outright terror that they'll be separated. Jane doesn't think she could breathe without her twin.

She certainly doesn't think she'd have held out for so long - the entire two weeks since this started happening - this - this _thing_ that they do - she would have broken down long before without Alec at her side. But that's not going to be enough. She's seen the writing on the wall.

And so has her better spastic half.

"We should do something about this," Alec says later in their shared bathroom, toothpaste foam dripping from his mouth. He's pitched his voice low, though it hardly matters. Neither of their parents are home.

Jane spits into the sink, considering. She concedes that he has a point, because without their consent, their talents are maturing faster than either of the twins could have predicted. She'd traveled across town in a breath when she saw a spider only hours earlier - and who knows what Alec's next surge was going to be if the jump in her range had grown so swiftly. He'd probably find himself in the Middle ages.

And it occurred to her, too, that everything was getting out of hand. She shouldn't be surprised that Alec is on the same page. They _do_ need to do something about - _this_.

"Like what?" she asks after rinsing her mouth out.

Alec shrugs. "Was hoping you'd have an idea."

Jane crosses her arms, leaning against the sink with her back to the mirror. She looks up at the ceiling, at the skylight that shows the blanket of the early night sky, tinged more with blue than black. The moon isn't there, as if it's hiding from the scary world as much as Jane wishes she could. Too bad it's not an option.

"What do your comic books say?"

Her twin snorts. "That we should get a mentor. But I don't think telling someone would be smart. The news isn't comforting at all."

"It'd be detrimental."

"Inimical."

"Deleterious."

"Disastrous."

"Suicidal."

They each pause, studying the weight of truth behind _that_ word. There isn't any exaggeration to be found.

"Agreed."

Jane's head lolls to the side, riot of curly blonde hair brushing against her shoulder. "Then, we should mentor ourselves, I guess. Figure it out for ourselves and hope like hell nobody finds out before we're ready-"

"Wait, ready for what, exactly?" Alec asks, brow deeply furrowed.

Her chest pangs because _of course_ her optimist brother hadn't thought beyond the present task of hiding these abilities from their parents, or even what would happen if - when - their parents found out. "Al," she says forlornly, shaking her head. "Before we're ready to protect ourselves."

She sees the second it dawns for her twin, the reality of their sticky situation, and she hates that she was the one to burst his bubble.

"Because we'd have to do that. Fight back."

"Or run," she tells him with a sigh. "Though, maybe it wouldn't be running, what with…"

"Your ability to teleport," Alec finishes with a weak laugh. "Yeah, I guess we wouldn't have to actually run. At least, you wouldn't. Who knows if you can take _me_ , too?"

And Jane nods, heart squeezing at the thought. She had considered that possibility, that their abilities weren't something that they could share like everything else - that maybe Jane could materialize somewhere, but that didn't mean she could take a passenger with her - that maybe, one day, Alec would freeze time and freeze her, too.

 _God, I hope not_.

Jane holds out her pinky, straightening from her lean, watching as Alec responds to her change in posture similarly. They link fingers, another silent promise to never, ever leave the other behind.

"We'll find out," she whispers. Swears.

"Suppose we will."

Time and space, though cool, are every difficult things to conceal.

Their mother figures it out first and she's positively horrified, but it's their father that calls the police, their father that lets some weird government agents into their home while the twins are asleep, each safe - or so they thought - in their rooms. By the time Alec wakes to a modified Taser digging harshly into his sternum, grounding him in the present with pain, Jane has already teleported into his room, pushing the agent away from her brother with dark bruises around her wrists. Alec reaches for Jane and Jane takes them far, far away.

She doesn't talk about what happened in her room. He doesn't ask, not even when they are soaked to the bone from the chilled Michigan rain, bare feet caked in mud and God knows what else and surely lost beyond comprehension. They are woefully unprepared to survive the wilderness and Alec is wracking his brain trying to come up with a solution _\- could he, like, take them to a time where they could survive without wilderness skills -_ when Jane stops on the side of the road, glaring at a line of approaching headlights.

It's _weird_ to see someone driving on the actual road instead of flying above it, even in a place as remote as the one Jane transported them to - it's weird enough that they stop and curiously read the signs printed on the sides of the caravan, fused yellow-green lettering bold against a red backdrop.

 _Sparks Extraordinary Carnival._

They look at each other when the caravan stops, idling with old fossil fuels, and someone steps out of the passenger side door. Alec feels his sister's hand tighten around his own and he squeezes back, sending a silent message of trust, a confirmation that he'll go where ever she wants to take them if it makes her feel safe. Because that's what twins do. They keep each other safe.

And then a wizened voice is breaking through the _drip-drop_ of heavy rain. "Thought I sensed someone out here," the man says, kind and solemn. "Come on, you crazy kids. You'll catch death out here."

Alec and Jane exchange a long look, a silent communique of raised brows and wrinkled noses, before they nod at the man, who introduces himself as Aro and promises that they're in like company.

 _Like company_.

Like - as in _like them_ -

The Sparks crew makes room for them in the second caravan, wedging them between a firebreather and someone who claims to find soulmates in her palm readings, among other things. It's Wendy, with her whimsical scarf and Tarot cards, that insists on tending to the slow-bleeding wound in Alec's chest, where the barb of the Taser had dug a crude line down his chest.

He hadn't even realized he was hurt and it's at that point that Jane begins to cry.

Their lives are never the same from that point onward and they keep tabs on the world evolving around them, on the growing reports of extrahumans as they pass through small towns, wondering and waiting when their real lives will catch up to them. If their parents are searching for them. If the government is still looking for them.

If that was even _the government_ storming through their house, eager to abduct them to who knows _where_ -

But the circus is a safe haven - and it's never more apparent than when the New Year rolls around.


	12. Issue No 2:1

Issue No. 2: NOT CAPED CRUSADERS

"Come a little gamma ray

Standing in a hurricane

Your brains are bored

Like a refugee

From the houses burning

And the heat waves

Calling your name…"

-Beck

 **1.**

 **Undisclosed Location - 2195**

"Buggering _fuck_."

Edward wakes up to harsh, circular white lights beating down above him, searing unforgivingly into his eyes and leaving red afterimages in his retinas, much to his irritation because _by the Queen's sagging tit_ does his head _hurt_. And so does his sodding shoulder, actually -

"Bloody fuckin' hell," he groans as memories slot into place in his mind, leaving a trail of incensed venom tapping along his synapses. He'd let his guard down, like an idiot, and he'd been shot.

Actually _shot_.

In _Cardiff_.

By _goons_.

Edward blinks rapidly, taking in his surroundings with an acidic sort of focus, jaw clenching and teeth grinding as he realizes that he is strapped onto a cold metal table at the neck, elbow, wrist, waist, hip, knee, and ankle by thick, black bindings with round electrodes pressing against his pulse points. The room is otherwise bare; he can only see a single camera mounted in the corner, a tiny thing no bigger than his thumb nail that is easily overlooked in favor of the bulbous lights dripping from the ceiling. There are no shadows in this room and it reminds him - viscerally, strangely - of the orphanage run by the nuns, only his memory is telling him that place was _full_ of shadows and flickering midnight candles and that _this_ \- this is nothing like that.

There is a second of outraged panic as Edward realizes that he's been captured. Like an animal. Like an experiment. _Like an extrahuman_. How did it happen? _Why_? But it must have been Emile.

 _That old sod was right_ , he reflects wildly, thinking of Winston's warnings, thinking of all the signs he should have seen from Emile. For fuck's sake, Edward had picked the damn lock right in front of that treacherous little windbag. Stupid. A mistake.

He exhales harshly. Wouldn't do him any good to go having regrets _now_ , would it?

No. He needs to get out of here.

Edward licks his lips, taking stock of his body again, this time more carefully. His shoulder is still fucked, but whoever is holding him here must have done something to heal it because he can smell the medicinal tang of bitter dogwood and capsaicin, can feel the abnormal tightness over his shoulder, under his arm, can even feel the pull of his skin against stitches in both the entry and exit wounds. He's not bleeding, then. He's been fixed up a bit. And drugged - that would explain the headache raging in his head, pounding away like a hangover. Edward's never been good with drugs. They make him sick. Whoever has him, though, drugged him for a reason - probably to keep him tranquilized through transport and treatment, but probably for another reason, too.

So he wouldn't escape.

Edward scoffs.

His metalsense is a bit delayed - that would be the drugs wearing off - but he's aware of every spec of metal in this white room. Table. Buckles. Camera. Lights. Door. Walls, maybe piping or some devices inlaid to keep track of _him_.

He grins wickedly. _Stupid sods_. They hadn't done their research, had they, before they decided to take him down like an endangered species? They didn't realize the full extent of what he could do, did they? Not if Emile was giving them information. Not even _Edward_ knew the full extent of his abilities, but he does know that nobody has any hope of holding him anywhere he doesn't want to bloody well be, not unless they drug him again. Which they won't - because Edward doesn't feel anything in his arms, doesn't feel the drag-pull of dullness in his senses, and if they _come inside the room_ to drug him again, well, they'll be wearing something metal, won't they?

A sense of victory beats in time with his pulse.

He would escape this place - where ever this place was, he would get out and get away and go into hiding. Not in Dublin, but maybe across the pond or on the continent. He could survive just about anywhere.

Yes. Escape and hide. Good plan.

Edward surges against the bindings, metalsense prodding the buckles until they melt, loose and silver and slippery-cold on his skin, and he sits up, abdomen clenching, teeth gritting at the pinch of pain in his shoulder, but he's not slowing down. His mind reaches for the metal in the camera, scrambling it. The lights shut off at his bidding, wires of bulbs fused too tightly together. The metal bed beneath him shivers and warps -

The door slides open and Edward grins sharply at the lab coat on the other side, a woman's face slack in shock -

He bares his teeth, casts out his hand and _tugs_ on the metal around her neck, in her ears, on her finger and wrist - the woman cries out in alarm, choking under the pressure of his power - _can he feel the iron in her blood - he can -_

Mist descends from the ceiling.

What - _poppies -_

Edward's body thumps against the floor.


	13. Issue No 2:2

**2.**

 **Ithaca, New York - 2195**

Bella had no idea the world was so colorful.

And maybe that's because she'd never viewed the world through the eyes of a child, not even when she _was_ a child. The young mind she'd latched onto automatically upon waking from a light doze on the train out of the city is vivid with imagination and creativity and the wonders of the world around him. The boy is young, perhaps three or four - _no, she knows Adam is exactly three years, seven months, thirteen days, six hours, and four minutes old_ \- with powdery, fake orange cheese smeared onto his chin, which transfers to the glass window as he presses against it, eyes wide and eager to take in the new sights _rushing, rushing_ by outside.

Bella is eager, too, completely entrenched in what Adam is feeling - excited, mostly, but also awed that the world is so _big_ and _bright_ and _there for the taking_ , even if he can't quite articulate those feelings for himself. His eyes - and Bella's, as she looks through his eyes, though his mind - are drawn to bold colors, to the pointy violet tips of trees in the distance, to the glint of fading sunlight reflected off cars hovering in the air. He sees a bird and wishes he could fly, too, and then thinks of the sleek planes on the telly and the flight-suited pilots and their helmets and how his father is one of those pilots and how he thinks he might want to be a flier, too.

Bella frowns _. She doesn't need to know that_. It's - it's reprehensible, being in a mind without permission. Beyond her control if she's not constantly aware of herself, which she can't be while sleeping, but still inexcusable. 

She pulls out of his mind, gently retracting the bubble that had swept over Adam and pulling it tightly around herself, the netting flush over her own thoughts as they return to a semblance of normalcy. She double checks that her thoughts are her own, flexes her fingers to confirm that the telekinesis hadn't risen in the absence of her watchfulness. It was a gamble riding a train, even though they weren't exactly popular anymore - used for tourists, really, or for those who feared heights. Bella, of course, did fear heights, but her purpose for choosing the train for transportation was more to do with the fact that trains would be less populated. Ideally, the less minds she is exposed to, the less she will have to focus to filter thoughts and images and ideas that don't belong directly to her.

It had worked until she fell asleep, lulled by the nearly-imperceptible jostling of the train car and the smooth, velvety upholstery done in a shade of greyish-cream that was plush enough to fully support the contours of her back, her neck. The sleep was light, as her guard wasn't fully down, but she might have kept sleeping if she hadn't realized that she was creeping into the mind of a child.

Bella isn't sure she had ever been so innocent. She watches as Adam's mother coaxes him to turn toward her so that she can wipe his face and suppresses a smile - and a sad sigh. She would never have that, would she? Already, Bella had lost her mother so early in life and now it was extremely unlikely that Bella would ever experience motherhood herself.

How unbelievably sad - Bella is seventeen and she doesn't even know if she _wants_ to have children - she's still a child herself, really, her body not even fully matured - but to realize that the option won't be there simply because she doesn't have enough time or the health to sustain a pregnancy? It's nearly too much of a tragedy, too much of an unfairness to even comprehend.

The slim purse at her side, white leather and rectangular with a thin strap long enough to cross her body, beeps once and Bella opens the flap, pulling out the palm-sized tablet she thought was the perfect size for travel. A reminder scrolls across the otherwise blank black screen. _Call Laurent_.

She hadn't told him she left. She thought that he might want to stop her, to reason her out of this impulsive decision to just - just _go_ \- and she hadn't wanted that. Laurent was her friend, her colleague, and probably the closest thing she had to family outside of Constance and her estranged father, but he wasn't her keeper and he certainly wasn't responsible for caregiving for his dying teenage lab partner. She didn't want that for either of them.

And so she had left the city, bundled in her warmest winter clothing with her slender purse and a rolling, square bag of luggage that could also be worn as a backpack. She'd taken only the necessities - the tablet linked to Columbia Science's lab databases for the continuation of her research, one month supply her augmented pain relief pills, paper identification and money should anything happen to the chip in her wrist, and a bare minimum of clothing. Any needs she had could be taken care of with a swipe of skin-to-scanner. Her father, she knows, won't even realize she's left and she tries not to let that bother her as much as it should. Constance might miss her for a while, but Bella isn't arrogant to think that her presence will dim the light in the woman's eyes. It's Laurent who is the challenge; he needs his order and she, somehow, had become part of that order in their lab.

But he would have to get used to her being gone, wouldn't he? Because she was dying and they both knew it. Hopefully he wouldn't begrudge her _need_ to do something with her life while she was still around to enjoy it. She doesn't know what she might do, how she might respond, if his reaction is decidedly negative, which is why she hadn't told him and why she was avoiding placing the call to inform him for as long as possible.

She puts it off as the train zooms a hundred miles an hour through the suburbs of New York state, north and to the west and north again, straight through forests and over the remains of old fashioned highways, through gently sloping hills and over bodies of man-made water. She puts it off as Adam and his mother hustle off the train in Scranton and again as the sky darkens fully, reddish orange at the horizon, boasting the evidence of prolonged pollution still clearing from the ozone layer. She puts it off as she exits the train in Ithaca, her first stop on this journey she makes up as she goes, and then begins counting down the minutes as she is directed to the nearest hotel, checked into a single-bed room, and seated stiffly on the edge of the mattress, small tablet in her hand. The blank screen is accusatory, her reflection tense, tightened at the brow, at the bow of her lips.

She pops one of her pills, swallowing dryly until the burgeoning pain of the ever-present headache - the tumors - is repressed until the next dose. Then she flips on the screen, scrolls through her contact list, and selects Laurent's number, his smiling icon picture a warm and welcome reminder that this is her _friend_ and that he has helped her and that he is keeping the secret of her genetic mutation when he has no reason to do so, especially as he _could_ be studying her for the sake of his research.

Laurent answers. He is not smiling at the moment. "Where are you? And don't think I'm gullible enough to believe that you're home, because your housekeeper says differently and you've never missed a day at the lab _ever_ and you were scheduled today because you've been out for the last few weeks but I came in and didn't have to reset the thermostat to _I know_ you haven't even been to Columbia. So, don't lie."

"I wasn't going to lie," she tells him, then sighs. "I'm taking a trip. A - a vacation."

"A vacation."

"Yes."

"I highly doubt that," he says baldly, pinching the bridge of his nose. "But I don't blame you for wanting to get away. For running away. It's understandable. You've got a lot going on."

"I'm trying to live, Laurent, while I still can," she says haltingly. "I don't think of it as running away."

"Maybe you're right," he allows. "But are you _alright_? Is it - well, is it safe for you, I mean, to be by yourself out there?"

 _He's fretting_ , she realizes and it's such a foreign feeling to know that someone is _worrying_ about her. And that's sad, too, that it should be so unfamiliar to her, that the last person to actually worry about her in such a way - honest worry - is her long-dead mother. That's not the way it's supposed to be. Constance worried about her, perhaps, but not in anyway that Bella thought came from a familiarity of her person; Constance worried as one might worry about strangers who befall tragedy. Laurent worried as one might worry about a sibling. Laurent worried as Bella's father _should_ worry. Inexplicably, her chest twinges at the thought and she rubs the area absently, returning herself to the moment.

"I'm fine," she answers benignly. "I have the tablets, of course, and more money than anyone could spend in an entire lifetime. My symptoms are limited to the headache and the fatigue, but those are easily countered by the medication, so -"

"That's not what I mean and you know it."

She tilts her head, eyes flicking to the closed door, the locked window. She's positive that she's alone in this room, that she is not being listened to, but she can't bring herself to speak explicitly _just in case_. "I'm perfectly acceptable on that front, too. Completely in control. I'll be fine."

"I heard a story earlier today," he says haltingly. "About an extrahuman in Texas that was gunned down by authorities for allegedly robbing a convenience store. It's not exactly favorable conditions out there, Bella."

"Good thing I'm not in Texas. I'll be sure to stay away from the south, in any case. Hot weather isn't my favorite. Mother was English, you know."

Laurent removes his glasses, cleaning them fretfully as he peers at her with dark eyes through the vid screen. "That's not the point. Texas is just the beginning. The hysteria - it'll spread to other places, soon enough and the government isn't doing anything to handle the situation-"

She shakes her head. "Laurent," she sighs. "Thank you for worrying, but we both know that it's not the extrahuman hysteria that's going to take my life."

He's quiet for a long moment, forlorn.

A rather unfortunate dose of reality. Bella, though, hasn't ever been prone to lying to herself, and perhaps it should have made her bitter or cynical, but she was foremost a scientist, which meant that she was foremost a realist. She could not, therefore, pretend that she wasn't running away while she still could, because she _was_ running away from her problems - futile, yes, but necessary. Bella wanted to be free. Bella wanted to live. Bella wanted to do _something_ , make a difference. Self-actualize before the clock counted itself down and she drew her inevitable final breath.

She sits up straighter, grey-flecked eyes snapping with attention. "I've been thinking about one of my research projects, actually, and how it might overlap with your current project dealing in the mutated-gene detections," she announces and it instantly draws Laurent's attention, just as she thought it might. The idea had occurred to her during her time on the train and Bella thought she might be thinking in the right direction, even if the ethics were somewhat sketchy. "What if we created a biologic with a specialized enzyme that reacted to the mutant strand in the DNA - not a corrosive reaction, of course, but something that made blanket detection easier -"

"Yes, yes," Laurent nods, rapidly catching to the idea. "I see what you're saying. A theoretical agent that would bond itself to, say, the DNA in hair, thus turning the subject's hair a particular color to mark them - the application would have to be -"

"Aerosol," Bella agrees. "But I'm unsure if the prospects are good for such an agent. It can be done quite easily, but suppose the government obtained the enzyme or used it to single out extrahumans instead of researchers using the enzyme to locate the exact sequence? Solve one problem, but create another that is much more worrisome."

"Outside of a lab setting, it would create issues, I agree - but how much easier would it be if this enzyme was able to track fluctuations in blood and tissue samples? It would cut my work in half! A truly brilliant idea, Bella."

She bites her lip. It was a good idea - she knew that. But the mere possibility of it falling into the wrong hands…That was always the problem with aerosol applications of chemicals, the ability for it to spread before it could be contained. Perhaps, then, the issue would be perfecting the reaction to be subtle enough and to be impractical outside of a lab - make it useful for science, but useless to the government. She could do that. She didn't think anything nefarious could be done if she took extra measures to ensure that the enzyme was basically useless - and make it more difficult for some other scientist to come up behind her and corrupt the enzyme. It would need failsafes on top of failsafes - but it could be done.

"You'll present it for funding, then?"

Laurent nods. "I don't think we'll be denied. But are you sure you want to share this with - with _me_?"

Bella's faint smile twists. "I think you're the best candidate to continue my work, Laurent," she tells him.

She does not tell him that she has already been in contact with her personal lawyer, that she has drawn up a will and placed _Laurent_ as the beneficiary on all of the trusts, properties, and shares that are in her name. She trusts Laurent to know that he would guide SWANN Corporations toward the right future after Bella was gone. Much to her lawyer's bewilderment, she had made the will so iron-clad that not even her father could counter the assignment of Laurent to Bella's assets; the only person who could change anything was _Bella_ and she certainly had no desire to do so. Laurent had been her lab partner, and now the sole keeper of her secrets; he was the perfect candidate to continue all aspects of her work, including becoming the new heir to a multi-billion dollar corporation.

Bella isn't sure when it will be a good time to tell Laurent any of this, however. It truly seems like a conversation best had face-to-face and she had no intentions of going back to New York until she could no longer sustain her own health, whenever that might be. Perhaps it would be a surprise, then, if she could not tell him before she passed. What a morbid thought.

Laurent grins bashfully. "That means a lot coming from a girl who had two PhD's before she could even legally vote. Meanwhile, I'm still technically an undergrad…"

She shrugs a bit, the tablet jostling with her movement. "You have the most sound ethics of all the people I know, and you're the only one who could possibly read my notes."

"That's true. While it's not quite chicken scratch, your handwriting is basically a series of loops that _somehow_ translate into actual English. Though I'm not unconvinced that you're just pulling my leg…"

Bella's answering laugh is bright and pealing and slackens the tether on her control enough that the leather-bound Bible on the hotel's bedside table hovers an inch before plopping down again and - in spite of that - in spite of everything - Bella realizes something that loosens the knot in her chest.

This is the closest to normal she's felt in a very long time.


	14. Issue No 2:3

**3.**

 **Undisclosed Location - 2195**

 _Cunts, the lot of them_ , Edward thinks with venom the next time he's capable of some variant of rational thought. He's been drugged to the gills, fed through a tube shoved down his throat, watered with needles in his veins, and pissing through a device secured to his nethers for days.

It's degrading, reminds him of that time he was ill at the orphanage and entirely reliant on the care of the nuns to keep him alive as he sweated out a fever; he'd been so out of his mind that he'd hallucinated his absent parents in fits of fever dreams that had been overheard by the other lads in the dorm. Those sorry sods had delighted in the blackmail material and Edward hadn't heard the end of calling out for his _mum_ until the day he left that wretched place, twisting the metal gates unrecognizable as he'd gone. He'd loathed the feeling of helplessness brought on by sickness nearly as much as he loathed the lapse of control over his mouth, his mind - and wherever he is now? It's threefold as atrocious. Edward doesn't have control over anything.

He wants to scream, thrash about and rip the needles and tubes from his person, but he can't. He's muted. He's tethered and neutered and only lucid enough to understand that they're running tests on him that become increasingly invasive.

It starts with scans, he's pretty sure. Edward is rolled beneath machines that hum at deafening decibels between bouts of consciousness. He listens to white-coated technicians comment on his brain, his body, the configuration of his veins. They call him Subject TH-30, removing his identity and replacing it with a mash of letters and numbers; they tattoo this designation on his wrist, right above his out-of-date chip, which he thinks that they have replaced with something _else_ , as the tiny scar is larger and blistering red, the metal beneath his skin wider, more flat.

The scans are only just the beginning. Edward isn't sure of the time that passes, though he does make a point to keep his thoughts active and vicious, planning for when he can _escape_ , memorizing faces and voices and assigning them numbers based on the severity of their crimes against his person. His vengeance is made all the more difficult by the fact that orderlies and doctors don blue paper facemasks with white piping when they know he is awake, so often the only details he can note are the color of hair peeking beneath sterile caps, the shape and color of eyes, and genders.

Edward develops a special sort of hate for a male doctor, obviously older with grey streaking through trimmed brows over muddy brown eyes, who wields a scalpel the same way an artist wields a paintbrush. The first time this doctor comes in, Edward's entire body is numbed by a generous dosing of localized anesthetic. Edward's eyes dart around, following the doctor's movements as the sheet preserving Edward's modesty is removed, as the doctor snaps on powder blue latex gloves and proceeds to examine every inch of Edward's body with a fine-toothed comb.

The doctor dictates his examination to the newly-replaced camera in the corner, his voice faintly accented, muffled behind the mask. "Specimen is in peak physical form," he comments idly, and though Edward cannot actually feel that latex sliding over his skin, he wants to flinch away from the touch, from the careful prodding. "According to records found on the chip found in Subject TH-30, specimen is twenty-three years old, six-foot-two, one-hundred and thirty-eight pounds, blood type O negative. Note - does blood type factor into mutation strain? Compare with other subjects at a later date. Moving on, examination of skin reveals several scars obtained prior to capture. Postulation - scars seem derived from some amount of regular violence judging by scar patterns. Very naughty, TH-30."

Edward closes his eyes. He can't - he won't just _watch_ this, will he? Incapable of moving, unable to tune out the continued commentary on his body, Edward _can_ retreat into his own mind. But it's very difficult as the comments grow increasingly graphic, nearly lurid even if the doctor's tone remains clinical.

"Subject TH-30 appears to be a natural blonde," he announces at one point and if Edward could, he would have ground his teeth together. The doctor notes other facts about Edward's body that nobody, save Edward, has any right to know; the number of freckles beneath his armpit, the areas of skin that respond easiest to sensation, how far the bends of his knees, toes, fingers, elbows can be flexed before joints release in _crackles_ and _pops_. And all the while, the doctor is talking and making notes to the camera, always curious, always observing, always _touching_.

Before the doctor leaves, he claps the top of Edward's shoulder, a friendly gesture completely out of step with the last stretch of time - and Edward _wishes_ he had half a chance to use his metalsense so he could shove the narrow metal bit holding the facemask in place right through the doctor's nasal cavity. He'd do it in a second, consequences be damned.

The second time is worse.

The doctor enters Edward's holding room - cell, really, only with white walls instead of metal bars - after he has already been dosed with the anesthetic, whistling a cheery tune as he circles the metal table Edward is secured to, his hands covered by blue latex again. A side table has been set up near Edward's hip and the doctor places a rectangular box onto the surface, opening it up with a flourish.

He pulls out a silver scalpel, examining the sharp edge even as he directs a gleeful chuckle toward Edward. "I've got such plans for you, Subject TH-30. Such grand plans. Let's get started, shall we?"

And with that, the doctor drags the blade over Edward's skin, easily slicing through the underside of his forearm with a satisfied hum. As the doctor begins to pull skin away from muscle and then muscle away from bone, careful to avoid the navy veins twisting and pulsing amidst a gush of ruby blood, Edward's sight doubles, then darkens. He loses consciousness with a strangled noise in the back of his throat-

When Edward comes to, the doctor is applying some sort of paste to the fine white stiches holding his arm together, happily explaining that this tacky serum smeared over the stiches will speed healing and limit scar tissue from building up. There are three separate rows of stitches on his arm - the one that caused him to pass out, one around the ball of his elbow, and another beneath the curve of his bicep - and a matching set on the opposite arm. The thick serum smells strongly of cloves, shiny under unforgivingly bright lights, a shade darker than shell pink and, Edward would guess, probably very cold.

The doctor's eyes brighten as he catches Edward surveying what has been done to him while his mind had seen fit to escape the horror of live dissection. "My very own creation, I'll have you know. Very advanced stuff," says the doctor. "You'll still be a perfect specimen, I promise."

Edward wants to glare and shout, but he can't and this time he's not even sure if he's frozen stiff because of the drugs or because of the shock of it all or because of his own crippling fear. In any case, he's too disjointed to gather his own bloody thoughts, let alone wrap his head around the reality of the situation he's been catapulted into - much less articulate an appropriate response, even if he could summon use of his vocal cords.

The doctor leaves with the same slim box beneath his arm.

By the third time the doctor returns, Edward mentally names him Moreau due to his chilling skill in vivisection, which distinctly reminds him of some sodding book he'd been forced to read in primary school. Each time Moreau decides to grace Edward with his presence is worse than the time before; Edward grows to dread opening his eyes once the numbness of anesthesia settles over his body, though he does manage to judge that the times between Moreau's visits are lengthened enough to give his body time to recover. He doesn't think any part of his body has been spared the opportunity to grow familiar with that twice-damned scalpel, as Edward's limbs become quickly sorted into three categories; healed with faint hairline scars, still-healing with puckered pink lines and dried clove-scented paste, and newly-healing with the shiny serum glinting beneath the lights.

Fingers, toes, the soles of his feet, his spine, the sharp jut of his jaw - Edward is marked, scarred by this madman, by this laboratory, by this inescapable experience. The physical evidence, in particular, is a drain to his mental fortitude. He is never given enough time to find his metalsense beneath the fog of medication. He is never removed from the room. He is never given actual food or water, and it all begins to show in the atrophy of his body, which thins and becomes sharper, more lean than before, like a wire.

Not that Edward had ever been the _optimistic_ sort before, but he was rapidly losing hope, losing motivation. He wanted to escape, and yet as time moved forward, however long that time was, Edward became less inclined to plan. What could he plan, anyway, when all he could see were the same four walls, the same set of orderlies, and the same shit-brown eyes of Doctor fucking Moreau?

He can't even properly think.


	15. Issue No 2:4

**4.**

 **Owego, New York - 2195**

She can smell the snow. The clouds overhead are ominously dark, heavy, and pregnant with the weight of water vapor patiently biding time until the limit finally breaks - and Bella, prone on her back in the middle of a snow-laden clearing off the side of a small backroad in a town scarcely the same population of Brooklyn, couldn't be happier as she waits for the snow to fall. She is doing something _spontaneous_ , having shunned her tablets to her purse and luggage, disconnected from the air-wave wifi and volume shut off. She is doing something she had never done before.

And it is exquisite.

There is something fiercely joyful about the creation of snow angels. Bella had come to Owego on a whim, following a random series of train tickets that she selected based on how soon departure was; she had stepped off the train and started in the direction the crowd was moving, allowing the bubble separating her mind from the rest of the world to thin and stretch; she'd caught stray thoughts, soft enough to be whispers, and wandered a town with no explicit purpose. She'd bought a hot drink, burnt her tongue, and laughed about it. And then she'd kept walking, following small roads and crossing intersections, eyes locked on the tall, snowy trees edging the border of the town until she happened across this handful of a clearing. The snow had been so pristine - she'd never seen anything as pure and as she had never played in the snow as a child, Bella had shaken off her hesitation and raced into the tiny snowy meadow, throwing her body onto the ground and marveling at the shock of cold that seeped through her warm woolen coat. Cold so absolute that it burned her skin as she moved her limbs to and fro, stretching her body the same way she stretched her mind - outwards and upwards and coming across nothing.

Bella does not have empirical evidence, of course, but she is certain that the range of her telepathy has increased in the weeks of aimless travel, perhaps nurtured by the peace and lack of pain she experienced. She was cautious with it, but when she could, Bella let her mutations loose - and each time, it was with a sigh of relief and a feeling that she could finally fully breathe, as if tightness had disappeared from her lungs, her diaphragm. She had the sense that she did not appreciate being cooped up - in any manner, not anymore. Not when it felt so blissful to just let go.

She blinks up at the sky, absorbing the sight of the flat, dark grey of the clouds, of the ambient light of the sun fighting to break through. Though she is shivering, she does not want to move. She doesn't want to lose this moment. She wants to remember it, sear it into her tumor-riddled brain, and know that she had at least once in her life given herself to something greater than ambition. She wants to know, for sure, that she had a single perfect moment with nothing containing her - not her emotions, not her mutations, and not her future.

She can _smell_ the snow waiting to fall in the clouds - a sharp, sweet, electric crispness so unlike any other scent in the world -

 _-and Mike will just have to accept that we can't be together, we just can't, not with the kids or what's been happening at the hospital and hasn't he ever been denied anything before, the way he spoke to me just now was -_

Bella sits up, turning her head in the direction of the thoughts echoing through her head. The tenor is rife with upset emotion, a sort of fragility that speaks of just barely holding oneself together, but there's another element to the thoughts that she hasn't felt before - almost like a glow, if such a thing were possible. The mind feels specifically unique, a warm undercurrent of sunshine shooting straight through the distraught train of cognizance.

It's a woman named Jessica. A nurse just getting off her shift after breaking up with her boyfriend, who had incidentally just expressed some truly unflattering opinions about a certain section of the population - And Jessica was so _offended_ by his ranting, as if it were personally insulting -

Gasping, Bella scrambles to stand on snow-slicked shoes, clumsy from the cold and fighting the sudden urge to vomit from the abrupt movement - for all the good her pain pills did, there were still some symptoms that couldn't be combatted and a lingering sense of fatigue paired with the overwhelming urge to purge what little she can keep in her stomach is but a few of them. She swallows thickly, gaining confidence in her balance as she tilts her head, trying to capture the strain that had passed so easily through her range.

It is the first time she is deliberately using her telepathy and she still feels a pinch of unease at the unethical actions - she should _not_ be trying to lurk in another's thoughts, but that uniqueness had caught her attention so thoroughly. Bella had to know, definitively, if what she _thinks_ is actually _true_.

Because - well, wouldn't it be magnificent if Bella could sense people like her?

Hurriedly, Bella gathers her discarded bags in her arms, shaking snow off her shoulders and out of her cropped hair as she clops through frozen land, dove-grey cashmere scarf looped heavily around her neck, obscuring her chin and warming her bare earlobes. Brows furrowed in concentration, she follows the - not quite the direction because it's less precise than that - but the tether of the thoughts. Her mind catalogues how odd it is to be actively listening for a sound that her ears cannot physically hear; her ears strain for the voice, but only the crush of snow beneath her boots and the whistling of the wind through the trees are audible. The thoughts she hears are not actually _heard_. It's a distinction that Bella hadn't quite realized and her scientific mind instantly because creating and tossing out hypothesis for _why_ and _how_ even as she trudges forward, thighs burning from the usual speed of her gait.

This is so very unlike her - the old Bella would have never deliberately sought out a stranger for any reason, let alone to attempt to ascertain if this stranger was afflicted with the same mutated gene as herself. But she is not the same Bella she was before and this new Bella, while moderately discomfited by the very idea of such an action, is overwhelmed by the untenable urge to put a face to the name floating through her head.

As this thought crosses her mind, Bella is very suddenly presented with an image of who she assumes is Jessica as Jessica sees herself - olive-skinned, dark-haired, and brown-eyed with a quirky smile and far too many dimples. Bella stumbles, catching herself against a wooden post lining the side of the road she has managed to find. She shakes her head. Similarly to the thoughts that she hears-but-doesn't-hear, this image is not layered over her physical sight, but rather something like a secondary lens, as if Bella had access to two of each sense.

 _Perhaps that is how the telepathy truly works_ , she postulates absently, retuning to Jessica's thoughts with gentle ease, coasting over the surface of this foreign mind like one might glance through a window. Meanwhile, in the back of her own mind, Bella notes how alarmingly easy it was to delve deeper into Jessica's mind - not even a fully-formed inquiry had resulted in an immediate return of information and it had taken less than a second of thought - unconscious thought - to happen. She wonders, half-horrified, if her telepathy was not limited to the reading of surface thoughts as she had once supposed -

And if that were true - if that was possible - then what were the actual limits of the telepathy? Of the telekinesis? Of - of her mutations?

 _How alarming_.

She resolves to think about it later, however, as she finally catches sight of the dark-haired woman who must be Jessica - who _is_ Jessica, though it immediately becomes obvious that Jessica's self-image does not match up to Bella's own perception of the woman, which she finds interesting to discover in the same sort of way that Bella finds everything interesting. She hadn't realized until that very moment that she might gain a particular insight to the human psyche with this ability, ethics be damned.

Jessica's thoughts have taken a turn during the time Bella has been rushing in her search; as she gets closer, Jessica's thoughts get louder and Bella is forced to take a moment of breath to manipulate the bubble around her thoughts and adjust the amount of output she's receiving from Jessica. She is very conscious of keeping to the surface thoughts, unwilling to invade more than she absolutely has to. Even still, Bella understands that Jessica has had a very trying day; aside from breaking up with the xenophobic boyfriend and being late to pick up her kids from daycare, Jessica's decision to take five minutes to cry out her frustration on one of Owego's backroads has ultimately led to some catastrophic failure in the engine of her car, which now refuses to start no matter how many times Jessica tries to coax the car into cooperation. Jessica's frustration and emotional turmoil is easy to ignore, Bella is grateful to realize - while she can sense Jessica's emotive state, she can only do so because _Jessica_ is consciously noting her emotions and that self-awareness is seeping into her thoughts in general.

Bella scarcely stops herself from sighing in relief. Hearing thoughts was bad enough - the last thing she wanted was to be forced to actually _feel_ another person's emotions. Her telepathy most definitely does not include empathic abilities. Good news, by all accounts.

She hesitates in her approach, stopping near the tailgate of the car, which is outdated by at least fifteen years and very clearly not capable of hovering in the air anymore if it was ever capable in the first place. Jessica has lifted the hood to peer aimlessly beneath it, her mind a jumble of confusion as it is presented with oil-slicked pieces of machinery, and she stands hidden from view, sniffling and upset at the horrible turn of her day.

Bella doesn't - She isn't sure what to do, isn't sure if she should break her own ethical code and just snatch the answer from Jessica's mind or if she should introduce herself or-

"Are you lost?"

Bella is jerked back into the present by Jessica's physical voice, which again is slightly dissociated from the voice of her thoughts - Jessica's mind speaks in a register half a tone higher and much more quickly. Another point of interest that Bella locks into her memory banks, ready to analyze later and compare with other experiences when - if - she gets the chance.

Quickly realigning her gaze, Bella brushes a wisp of dark hair off her forehead, tucking it back into the soft knit cap pulled over her head as she shakes her head, a silent negative to Jessica's not unkind inquiry - and she abruptly experiences the very odd disparity of seeing herself through another's eyes, which causes her to pull back her bubble, fitting it snugly around her own mind to spare herself the disorientation. This has the secondary effect of instantly cutting off her access to Jessica's mind, which plunges her own psyche into sudden desolation, such absolute silence that Bella takes another moment, just the split of a second, to stretch her telepathy gingerly, extremely conscious of her own thoughts.

It is exceptionally difficult to know that a single thought - even a half-formed notion - even an unconscious reaction - is the hair-trigger for her telepathy. What's worse is that it is an additional constant struggle - the monitoring of her thoughts - that must be meted out by a balance in her emotions, as is evidenced by the flutter of gravel and snow in a foot-wide circle beneath her feet in response to her rapid fluctuation between surprise-then-shock. Bella's eyes dart to the ground, the furrow in her brow growing heavier until the gravel settles. She hopes that the movement wasn't caught by Jessica, who is staring at her with kind, but skeptical red-rimmed eyes.

Purposefully keeping her telepathy limited to the barest surface of Jessica's thoughts, Bella is inordinately bereft of any idea how to proceed - she had not thought out what she might do when she approached this woman, a fact that she is sorely regretting. She knows, however, that she absolutely cannot bring up the possibility that Jessica could be an extrahuman, not so quickly and maybe not at all. If she had more confidence and more flexible ethics, she might have dared to slip back into Jessica's mind and definitely discover the answer.

Bella does not give into the urge.

Instead, she lifts her lips into a shadow of a smile, crossing her arms over her chest to retain warmth. "I was just walking and I noticed your car pulled over here," she says, internally wincing at the not-quite-lie even as her words go a long way into soothing the wariness from Jessica's visage. "Engine trouble?"

Jessica grimaces. "Unfortunately. It's not been the best day, so I should have expected that the car would crap out on me, too, but I - I'm sorry, this isn't your problem…"

"Bella," she supplies.

"Jessica."

Bella bites her tongue to refrain from saying _I know_. Instead, she musters up her courage and says, "I could take a look at the engine if you'd like."

Jessica looks surprised, but steps aside anyway, huffing into her mitten-clad hands as Bella rounds the hood of the car. If Bella hadn't been able to read her mind, she might have thought that Jessica's surprise stemmed from the altruistic offer - but as she is privy to such things, she knows that Jessica's raised brows have more to do with Bella's youth than anything else. Jessica does not think that Bella looks the type to be able to fix cars and she's right, for the most part. Bella, with her slender bird-like build and pale skin, is at home in a lecture hall, in a lab, in any place that does not include grease and clanging tools. But Jessica couldn't possibly know that Bella did, in fact, have a dab hand in general engineering and between her self-taught interest and her prodigious memory, she was more than qualified to at least examine the engine of this car.

It is a closely-guarded skill, however. Bella's interest in engineering is closely related to her degree in biochemical engineering; she'd first been introduced to the basics of mechanics in her first year of college during an introductory course that spent all of a single week on the similarities between mechanical and biochemical engineering. Back then, she had been tempted to change her major, fascinated by the breadth of the subject, but had ultimately decided against it given her father's distaste for "inelegant" sciences and Bella's desire to please her only parent. Instead, she had studied engineering by herself during semester breaks, learning all she could without alerting anyone to her interest. Laurent still doesn't know that Bella had tampered with their holo-projector in the lab - he simply thought that Bella's name and affiliation had resulted in Columbia forking over the funds to purchase the newest technology to outfit the laboratory used by the Swan heiress.

Bella was by no means an expert, but she hardly thought that a simple car engine would prove to be any sort of _real_ challenge. Peering at the rusted components under the hood, it doesn't take her very long to identify the source of the problem. She removes the glove on her dominate hand and fiddles with the cluster of plugs settled along the side of the transistor, waiting to hear the low _click_ that would indicate the reconnection of circuits to the engine. Her fingertips are smeared with grease as she closes the hood with a definite smile. "That should do it," she says to Jessica, who has handed her a tissue to clean her hands, which Bella accepts gratefully. "You'll want to have those plugs replaced, though. It's still going to be a problem, especially in this weather."

Jessica's profuse gratitude is quick after she tests the engine, slipping into the front seat to start the car, her mind a copse of bewilderment. "Do you need a ride into town?" she offers, leaning over the driver-side door. "It's the least I can do."

Bella's pride is not so great that she can't admit that she is cold, that the weather has begun to chill her bones and exasperate her reserves of energy, so she accepts the ride back into town; it's all the better as she has no idea how far she'd walked from the train station and would have, in all likelihood, gotten lost rather quickly. Additionally, Bella has an obvious opportunity presented in the time allotted for the car ride wherein she can at least attempt to bring up her hunch, hopefully in the most casual way possible.

But Bella is not particularly blessed with social skills and Jessica's mind is swathed in stereo static facilitating between the argument she'd just had with her now-ex-boyfriend and her two children under the age of five who -

 _-I have to figure out some way to stop this, I can't let my kids down, they'll be taken away from me for sure just like that mother in Delaware, oh, God, how horrible, I can't let that happen, I wish it would just stop-_

Before Bella can wonder what exactly needs to _stop_ in Jessica's life, an incredibly strong memory rises to the surface of her mind, washing out her thoughts in favor of explicit recall of the scent of copper and iron blood and antiseptic soap, a staggering sense of fear-elation-horror, and the overwhelming sense of warmth in Jessica's palms as she presses her hands against the gaping wound of a trauma patient - warmth that spreads from her hands, to her fingers, to the bloody wound, and then further until the horrific injury seems to be caught in a reversal of time - as it is _healed_ before Jessica's eyes - Jessica who is frozen by what is happening and also glad that the patient is rendered unconscious by pain and that no doctors were hovering in the background - but also _confused_ and _scared_ because how would she explain this - and then it happened _again_ -

Bella inhales sharply, snapping the bubble around her mind to protect herself from such a total immersion - she'd had no idea that memories were so potent and in the space of a second where she is processing what Jessica's mind had revealed, she wonders if only certain memories are as vibrant or if all memories were stored with such intense recall or if -

 _Another time_. _Priorities_ , she reminds herself.

And then her mouth runs away from her and she is breaking the silence of the car as she blurts, "You can heal people?"

Jessica slams on the breaks, jarring both of them against the restraint of seat belts. She looks at Bella, blanching, hands curled into white-knuckled fists over the steering wheel. "Wh-what are you talking about?"

Bella lifts her chin, her insight into this woman's life making her feel like she _knows_ Jessica - like she's always known Jessica - and like what Jessica needs right now is some honesty. The sense of familiarity, she knows, is a byproduct of telepathy because the truth is that Bella _doesn't_ know Jessica even if she, well, kind of does know intimate things _about_ Jessica. Another disparity that Bella would wonder about in the days to come, to be sure.

"It's okay," she says calmly, folding her hands together, soft dove suede fabric whispering through the tension of the car. "I'm…like you. Or rather, I'm similar to you. I haven't any healing abilities, but I _am_ extrahuman-"

"Shh!"

Bella lifts her brows. "I assure you, we are alone. I would know," she says, tapping her temple with no small amount of irony.

Jessica catches on quickly, her eyes widening in surprise. "You read minds?"

"Among other things."

Jessica's lips thin into a ridged line, her thoughts darting to images of her children, happy-cheeked and dark-haired. "Is that how you knew - or did someone tell you?" she demands, leaning forward aggressively, thought there is a shadow in her eyes, a lurking sense of fear, of flightiness. Jessica is prepared to leave at any moment should her secret be found out; she has no less than three go-bags for her and her children stashed in her car, in the house, and in the shed at her mother's place -

Bella inhales sharply. "Nobody told me," she rushes to reassure. "Nobody would have to tell me. I wasn't lying, exactly, earlier. I did see your car, but only after I heard your thoughts. I was intrigued by your mind - there was something odd -"

" _Odd_?"

"Perhaps not _odd_ ," Bella fumbles, silently cursing her social ineptitude. And yet her guilelessness seems to be a boon in this situation, as Jessica releases a heavy sigh and deflates, her thoughts broadcasting how _innocent_ she found Bella to be - _freckles and wide eyes and not out to get me or my kids_.

"You nearly gave me a heart attack."

"I'm sorry," Bella replies meekly. "You're the first I've ever met, apart from myself, of course…"

Jessica studies her for a moment and as privy as she is to Jessica's thoughts, it is still a surprise when the older woman extends yet another invitation, this time for a reprieve from a hotel room for a night, a place at a family dinner table, and the opportunity to tell Jessica everything she knows about being extrahuman. Bella accepts without hesitation and the night that follows is one of great education.

Bella is shown how a healthy family operates within a modest home, with a single parent, with a delivery of pizza and a movie made for children. She confirms the differences between extrahuman minds and normal human minds. She learns that Jessica is as leery at the current state of events as Bella is, and then she learns about the limitations to Jessica's mutation, which she surmises would _not_ heal the tumors rotting her brain without also taking Jessica's life. With all of this information, Bella then metes out a string of advice to Jessica based on scientific postulation - particularly in how to avoid draining her own energy and how to attempt controlling the healing. On the couch after the little family has gone to bed, Bella also arranges for a new car to be delivered to Jessica's residence - she considers this the least she can do, given that Jessica's simple kindnesses had given Bella a glimpse of all she had missed during her childhood. And while it was certainly heart-wrenching, she also felt a great weight lift off her mind - because now she _knew_ what it could have been like.

"Are there many of _us_?" Jessica asks that night, curled around a cup of coffee after she has put her children - a boy and a girl, each jam-stained and deliriously happy, their minds oh-so tempting for their innocence - to sleep upstairs. The living room is well-worn, scattered with toys and comfortable throw pillows and Jessica, who has made up the couch for Bella with sheets and a thick hand-crafted quilt, sits cross-legged on the floor near the coffee table, the only light slanting from the kitchen and creating a safe, cozy atmosphere. Still, Jessica's voice is hushed, her eyes darting to the stairs.

Bella tilts her head, an unconscious motion that will eventually become habit as she cocks an ear to hear something that only she can detect. "They're sleeping," she says of the children, reassuring Jessica that their conversation would be private. Bella gnaws on her lip, exhaling a deep breath over the curling steam of green tea cradled in her hands. "If you believe the news, our population is…rather concerning."

"And if you don't believe the news?" Jessica prompts.

Bella shakes her head. "It's impossible to know. You're the first I've personally come across, but that can be attributed to any number of reasons, in particular my previous inability to sort the thoughts that I hear. While New York comfortably accommodates four million, I would estimate that the vast majority are normal humans and that any… _of us_ …are lost in the noise, hiding under my radar. My conservative estimate - and I have a colleague who agrees - would be that the city itself houses at least a few hundred, but we know so little about the mutations that the number could be upwards of a thousand. It's one of the challenges that will crop up in research, mark my words. Geneticists will debate on whether or not mundane genetic mutations, such as cancers or freckles, are technically qualified…But politicians will likely insist that it is the obvious presence of powers that mark us as _extra_ …"

"How terrifying," she murmurs in response, peering sightlessly the paisley rug spread across the floor. "Genetics…you don't think my kids…?"

"No. Not from what I can tell. They're absolutely wonderful, but perfectly normal."

Jessica closes her eyes in obvious relief. "Thank God. I wouldn't want them to -"

Bella thinks of the news feeds that she has begun to avoid, the stories of extrahumans accused of crimes, arrested without provocation, beaten in developing countries, or otherwise shunned from society and unable to hold jobs or lead normal lives once their secrets had been revealed. And that's not even to mention the disappearances of people all across the world, which was a sinister story itself but made all the more horrific by the question of what, exactly, is happening to those people. The condemnation was rapid and avid, all stemming from basic ignorance and fear-based political propaganda that Bella can scarcely wrap her mind around.

"I understand," she says, though the words are suddenly wooden in her mouth.

Bella would never understand the concern a mother holds for her child. But she can empathize.

Bella does not tell Jessica who she is, exactly, though she does jot down Laurent's contact information should Jessica begin to experience anything peculiar with her mutation. "He's looking into the heritability patterns," she says the following morning, pushing a sheet of paper in Jessica's direction, pen laid neatly against the surface. "If you're interested."

Jessica hums thoughtfully around a mug of coffee, smoothing wayward hair from her daughter's face. "I'll think about it," she says, darting an anxious look to her happily oblivious children inhaling their breakfast.

Bella doesn't need telepathy to know that regardless of Bella's assertion the previous night that Jessica is worried that her mutation will pass to the next generation - she doesn't think that any decent mother would _want_ her children to be in mortal peril just because of who they happened to be. Her mind draws parallels to the civil rights movements of yesteryear and she wonders, not for the first time, how anyone could condemn an entire population for no reason other than ignorance and hate.

"That's a way to contact me, too, if you ever need anything."

"I feel like I should be saying that to you," Jessica replies mildly.

"Be that as it may," Bella smiles, already treading toward the front door, prepared to leave and catch the next train out of town. She doesn't want to overstay her welcome and she doesn't want to be caught in one place. She has the sense that she's meant to be moving around, but she can't imagine what she's looking for or if she's looking for anything at all. And - she would never utter it, but she was deeply discomfited by this morning scene of mother-and-children. It makes her ache for her own mother, and mourn for that which she will inevitably loose. As enlightening as Jessica's existence has been, it has also been a cause of restlessness, and so Bella will retreat.

Wherever that may be…

She's halted, though, by Jessica's daughter, who rushes forward to grasp Bella around the legs. She blinks, startled. "Oh, ah hello."

"Hi!"

Bella, at a loss for how to interact with this child, shuffles awkwardly. "I've got to go, now, or I'll miss my train…"

Jessica snorts. "I'd offer to drive you, but you'd just refuse. Again."

"The snow is freshly-fallen," she says by way of explanation. She's never walked in freshly-fallen snow and some part of her is excited by the notion of leaving her footprints crushed in the haurfrost; even if her mark upon the world would be brief, at least it would _be there_ , a tangible piece of herself for all to see and appreciate.

"Do you have any idea where you'll be heading?"

Bella shakes her head, detangling herself from the spindly clutches of four-year-old enthusiasm. "Where the wind takes me, I suppose."

Jessica laughs - and then her little girl grins, gap-toothed and sweet, and asking, "Have you ever been to the circus?"

Bella tilts her head, considering. "No, I haven't…What a marvelous idea!"


	16. Issue No 2:5

**5.**

 **Undisclosed Location - 2195**

To Edward's eternal horror, he begins to suspect that Moreau is the psychopath in charge of the entire facility. Which is actually less ideal than the bloody reality that sodding Moreau has been placed - or volunteered to be placed - in charge of _Edward_.

Moreau's shit-brown eyes greet him in increasingly frequent intervals, always hidden behind that craven facemask, always after Edward's body has been inundated with those nerve-deadening drugs that cut him off from his body, from his metalsense, from everything except for his burning desire to fight back against his captor. Edward can't so much as twitch a finger, but between involuntary blinks, his eyes stray to that stupid camera perched at the topmost corner of his room, his fury rising with each intermittent red light that tells him in no uncertain terms that he is being watched, recorded, _studied_. And he hates it - he hateshateshateshates -

That infernal case is tucked beneath Moreau's arm again, which isn't _new_ , but it is a point of dread to note that the case is accompanied by a _second_ , larger case held aloft in the doctor's hand. Edward wants nothing more than to gnash his teeth into Moreau's hands, to feel the swell of hot copper slipping against his face.

Edward doesn't know how long he's been in this laboratory, but he does know it's changing him. He is savage. He is an animal. He has been _reduced_ even as Moreau reveals that they are seeking to _enhance_.

"Smart thing you are, I'm sure you've noticed I brought a few more tools today," says Moreau as he circles Edward's bed, leering with the kind of clinical attention that speaks of vile, evil things, thoughts and experiments that are not tempered by ethics. Moreau opens the case and lifts it into the direct line of Edward's sight, showcasing an assortment of silvery bits of metal - small, thin, curved, flat, thick, _spiked_ \- and grinning as if the canary was caught between his teeth. "How do you feel about some…modifications?"

Edward does not care for modifications, but TH-30 does not have a say in these matters.

Eyes pried open with firm settings of tape to keep him from blinking or looking away, Edward is forced to watch his body sliced open again and again - and this time, he must watch as Moreau binds metal to Edward's very bones, as Moreau drips liquid metal over fresh cuts to seal incisions, as Moreau moulds and melds and _modifies_ until the end result leaves Edward gaping soundlessly at a body that is no longer his.

What Edward had not realized was how receptive his body is to metal. His very cells, as Moreau explains, crave contact with metal, which is why there is no need to bond these additions with screws or nails; Edward's body, at a cellular level, does the work for Moreau. It feels like the greatest betrayal that Edward's body would allow this to happen, that it would actively encourage the inlay of silver-titanium-iron over the round joints of his knuckles, wrists, elbows, shoulder sockets, hipbones, kneecaps, ankles, toes. Edward's body becomes a Frankenstein tableau, with metal swelling through skin, glinting off the white lights of the laboratory, melted perfectly around silvery-scars and pale, washed-out skin. His body does not _reject_ this metal; it embraces it and though he cannot feel it, exactly, Edward knows that his body is heavier after Moreau begins with the direct injections of metal into his bone marrow. His ears pop from the new sense of pressure, his eyes dry and bloodshot.

He cannot look away. He cannot fight back. He cannot stop what is happening - what has happened -

But in the back of his mind, this new twisted part of himself rejoices - a warped sort of enthusiasm that begins to wonder - with vivid attention to detail in these shadowy, hypothetical scenarios - he begins to wonder what he could _do_ with these modifications Moreau has made without his consent.

If Edward had access to his metalsense…

He could manipulate this metal taut on his skin, in his bones; he could pull it out, shape it, _use_ it to put force behind his movements, to draw metal to him, to create, to _kill_. He could do it. It would be easier than breathing and more convenient than his piercings. Edward's body was the metal, now. He'd never have to search, to reach, to waste a second of extra thought to _find_ and _take_.

He thinks this is probably Moreau's goal, though he can't imagine why the man would be so stupid as to make Edward into such a weapon without first guaranteeing that Edward was complacent.

Because these disturbing, diabolically violent thoughts swarming Edward's mind? They prove that his mind is still his own. These thoughts _prove_ that even though his will is halted at the moment, that Edward - _Edward Masen -_ wasn't destroyed yet.

He clings to these bloody, fanatical fantasies in the days that follow, taking every moment that Moreau leaves him alone to study his body until he does not feel the urge to gag at the sight of silver shining over his joints. He clings to these fantasies and he plans how he might use this metal that has been seared into his body, accepted by his body.

They tried to take his body away, and maybe they did because _Edward_ had never been this emancipated, but that Edward is gone. This new Edward is vicious, frothing at the mouth and seething in silence and oh-so eager to thrash, to destroy, to burn the world at his feet and that's his _mind_ \- so they could have his body, Moreau could _have_ this body, because they'd never take his mind.

They'd never take his mind. Not ever.

Edward begins to plot.

If Moreau wants a limp puppet to play with, Edward will give him one.

Let them think that they had broken him. Let them continue their experiments. Let them _try_.

Edward hadn't been broken by anything - not the nuns, not the orphanage, not the hunger or poverty or pain that came with street fighting. He'd not been broken by fear _once_ in his life - just over twenty-years, now - and he wasn't about to start _now_.

Let them make him into a weapon - they wouldn't live long enough to regret it.


	17. Issue No 2:6

**6.**

 **Poughkeepsie, New York - 2195**

Sparks Extraordinary Carnival is a mesmerizing whirl of color and sound a veritable cornucopia of new experiences that continually draw Bella's attention to each burst of excitement that crosses the surface thoughts of the dense crowd she is wading through. If possible, the noise pollution of the physical circus is dwarfed by the sheer volume of mental sound ringing through her ears. More than once, Bella must duck into the space between game booths and tents, catching her breath and solidifying the flimsy bubble protecting her mind from the minds around her.

She catches the curious gaze of children as they pass, arms loaded with stuffed prizes, hands held by patient parents; she smiles, faint, consciously pulling her spine straight as she steels herself. The noise is like being back in the brownstone in Manhattan, as if she is right in the center of a booming metropolis - but her range is so concentrated that if she breathes, takes a moment to focus, she can reach to the outer edges of her bubble and find brief solace in the thin thread of thoughts that spread through the woods surrounding the clearing where the circus has been set up.

It's a sprawling place, laid out in a vaguely rectangular design of game booths, tent attractions, a petting zoo, a collection of trained animals, and several rickety metal rides, including a bright-lit Ferris wheel that spins in dizzying neon designs in time with cheery instrumental music. From Bella's mental perspective, she knows that there is an assortment of caravans lining the forest edge, pulled far enough away from the circus proper that patrons couldn't possibly mistake the trailers for additional attractions. Her mind has latched onto thoughts in that area since she arrived, like a magnet pulled toward complimentary metals, and she _knows_ that the bright mindscapes traveling between the caravans and the circus are like Jessica - like _her_.

Bella hadn't expected this when she followed the advice of Jessica's child. She can't imagine that the girl had known, either, but that was a mystery for another time.

What mattered now was the fact that Bella could sense no less than twenty-five extrahumans within the range of her mental shields, each of them explicitly tied to the circus - as performers, as tiger-wranglers, as cooks and game operators, as featured attractions that play at being hoaxes but are all too real. The Sparks Extraordinary Carnival is quite literally _extra_ ordinary. Bella can't decide whether or not she should be horrified by how careless these extrahumans are being or if she should be impressed by their audacity.

Taking advantage of the moment of temporary refuge - her shored-up mental walls would last only for a handful of minutes once she treaded back into the thick of the crowd - Bella pulls out her handheld tablet from the side pocket of her little purse, swiping to Laurent's text thread. He'd taken to keeping tabs on her by the way of constantly pinging her with snippet conversation not unlike the casual chatting they shared in the laboratory. The simple human connection went a long way to soothing the fray of Bella's nerves as she continues to battle the symptoms of her existential crisis. She's positive that Laurent knows this; even for the empathy in-born with telepathy, Bella has been so far removed from her own emotions, so prone to rationality and bottling up her reactions in favor of _responding_ with cool logic that she struggles to reconcile what is actually happening to her body. To _her_. It's so much easier to simply act, to work for solutions, to avoid the issue until she can't anymore because of the ache in her head, the blood beneath her nose, the nausea that turns her stomach as she catches a whiff of greasy carnival fare.

But she refuses to neglect her humanity, and so she continues to answer Laurent's continued queries - because he cares, because he might be the only person to care that in a few short months she could be simply _gone_.

For that, and so much more, Laurent deserves her attention. She will remain loyal, gracious for his emotional investment.

* * *

 _From LAURENT CHIDI (10:18AM)_

 _People are asking where you are. I have continued to spread the vacation story, but it seems to have taken a life of its own on campus: apparently, you've run off to southern isles to either locate some fabled compound in the pollen of a flower that I am sure does not exist, or you have left the university all together for greener pastures and the vacation is a cover-up for some corporate hostile takeover you're involved in._

* * *

 _From LAURENT CHIDI (10:20AM)_

 _I think you should be flattered people are so interested._

* * *

 _From LAURENT CHIDI (10:21AM)_

 _I just wish they would stop coming into the lab and interrupting the environment regulations._

* * *

 _To LAURENT CHIDI (10:32AM)_

 _Change the passcode._

* * *

 _To LAURENT CHIDI (10:33AM)_

 _And don't let people think that my father's company is going to buy the university. That's absurd._

* * *

 _From LAURENT CHIDI (10:34AM)_

 _Are you saying he couldn't afford it?_

* * *

 _To LAURENT CHIDI (10:35AM)_

 _That's not the point._

* * *

 _From LAURENT CHIDI (10:37AM)_

 _That's not a denial, so I won't go around denying that completely plausible hypothesis._

* * *

She hadn't replied to that, as that had been when the train out of Port Jervis had been boarding and she didn't want to delay locating the circus any more than she already had. After leaving Jessica's house, Bella had spent the next week jumping on and off trains at stops that caught her attention, spending idle time experiencing life the way she had never done before - restaurants of specialty cuisine, parks and ball games and roasted peanuts, an outdoor concert with soaring instrumentals. Happening across the advertisement for Sparks Extraordinary Carnival had been random and as it was the first circus she'd come across, Bella had taken it as a sign that it was the circus she should go to - and only then did she make arrangements to go to the next town the carnival had stopped in. Laurent, for his part, had been amused that she was going to a _circus_ of all things, but she'd been eager.

But no - this was not what she expected.

* * *

 _To LAURENT CHIDI (02:44PM)_

 _At circus. Chan, there's two dozen EX here._

* * *

To _LAURENT CHIDI (02:45PM)_

 _Respond ASAP._

* * *

 _From LAURENT CHIDI (02:45PM)_

 _Are you serious_

* * *

 _From LAURENT CHIDI (02:45PM)_

 _Verifiable?_

* * *

 _To LAURENT CHIDI (02:46PM)_

 _I have zero doubts._

* * *

 _From LAURENT CHIDI (02:46PM)_

 _What are you going to do?_

* * *

 _From LAURENT CHIDI (02:46PM)_

 _Stupid course you're going to approach them._

* * *

 _To LAURENT CHIDI (02:47PM)_

 _What else can I do?_

* * *

Because Laurent is right - she is going to approach at least one of these extrahumans, hopefully as reservedly as possible and with more finesse than she had with Jessica, but she _has_ to make contact. She has to know what they're doing, why they're traveling together in such a recklessly large group, why they're evidently making very little effort to conceal their mutations from the general population. Hiding in plain sight would only last so long. Surely they aren't ignorant of the upheaval bursting through the underside of their society. They _must_ know the attitude toward people like them.

Bella can't fathom doing something so - brave. She's not a brave person.

These people are unaccountably brave. They have more courage than can possibly be imagined.

* * *

 _To LAURENT CHIDI (02:48PM)_

 _I'll let you know how it goes._

* * *

 _From LAURENT CHIDI (02:48PM)_

 _And I'll be anxiously awaiting your next update. Literally._

* * *

Taking a deep breath, Bella steps back into the crowd, following the push-pull of people as the crush of bodies gather toward the northern end of the carnival where a rather large, rather _loudly_ striped circus tent - an absurd clash of day-glow orange and a green so astonishingly bright it might as well be yellow. It is by far the largest tent, clearly one of the main attractions, and where Bella can sense the highest concentration of extrahuman minds congregating behind the heavy velvet blue curtains that line the hastily-rigged wooden stage set dead-straight in the middle of a three-sided set of bleachers. For Bella, as she settles on one of the elevated rows toward the back, this tent promises every idle notion she had ever had about circuses; an obvious collection of metal cages housing various animals, a myriad of classic stunt objects, trapeze and tightrope and an interesting lack of netting to catch the acrobats that will surely be swinging from those high, round wooden bars. She studies the set up, warily looking for anything that might give these extrahuman performers away, but she can't see anything incredibly damning - nothing that can't be written off by exceptional talent, at least.

And then the spotlight clicks on and Bella is riveted.

Decked out in a tailed tuxedo the most vibrant shade of chartreuse, an elder man steps onto the center of the stage, tipping his tall white-and-gold striped top hat with a gallant grace, bowing to each section of the stands in turn to the sound of a low, rolling drum beat and the excited chatter of children. He straightens, grinning widely behind the raggedy tangle of snowy facial hair cut a few inches beneath his chin. His eyes are deep-set and an even deeper brown than seems fathomable. And his mind is the eye of the storm, a silence so complete that Bella fears looking away - if she blinks, he will disappear, for surely a mind _so quiet_ cannot be anything but a figment of her imagination.

Yet he is real and he is extrahuman and Bella understands that he is undoubtedly in on the joke of the carnival, perhaps even the origin of the joke, of the trick of hiding in plain sight - it is frighteningly obvious in the way he delivers his introduction, voice rising easily above the crest of the drum roll and the applause of the audience. "Welcome! Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, to Sparks _Extra_ ordinary Carnival, where our aim is to entertain and amaze!" he says, pressing a palm to his chest as he continues. "I am Aro, your ever-present presenter! We have many _extra_ ordinary treats for you this afternoon, folks! So sit back, relax, and let your _mind_ …be astonished. For your pleasure, I give to you, Here and Now, the dizzying acrobatics of the Doppelgangers!"

And then - much to Bella's shock -Aro's fathomlessly dark eyes look right at Bella as he steps back into the shadows, his mind reaching forward, no longer silent. _Welcome to the Carnival,_ he says.

Her fingers tangle together as she fights to keep the plain surprise off her face. Bella has always been gifted with admirable control over her facial expressions, but she struggles in this moment, almost fails at this challenge. And it is a clear challenge, an obvious estimation from this old genteel man in the flamboyant clothes with the fiercely intelligent eyes and iron-clad control over his own mind. He _knew_ she was there in the audience, watching and waiting to gauge the other extrahumans herself. He probably knew the exact moment she stepped onto the carnival grounds. In fact, he _did_ know exactly what she was and where she was and what she could do the second she slipped into _his_ range - because he is indelicate in allowing this to come to the forefront of his mental barriers. Aro steps back into the shadows of the stage even as his mind steps forward, pushing against Bella's bubble in a way that is similar but _very_ different from her telepathy.

She has the sense that Aro cannot read her mind. He can't press forward and seek information about _who_ she is, but he does know that she is like him. Her first thought, far back in her mind beneath the stillness of her surprise at his gall, is that he is terribly limited. But his limit is absolute, nonetheless; he lets her know this explicitly as whatever power he has pursues her mindscape, honing in on a specific section that seems to denote _her_ abilities.

Bella had done something similar to Jessica's children - but she'd had to search, to scrape through every thought and memory and emotion to identify if there was something extraordinarily odd in the mind of those children. Aro has no such troubles. He zeros in on the exact piece of Bella's mind, his essence reaching forward and humming around some switch in her brain that she instantly identifies as being the center of her abilities.

 _Almost_ , he says from the shadows, mental voice right in her ears but deeper, pushed below the noise of the audience that cheers as two young acrobats flip onto the stage energetically.

Bella forces her expression to remain placid as she focuses inward. _It isn't the switch to the activation of the extrahuman gene?_ She wants the clarification, because if it _is_ , if there is some kind of organic activation in the mind, then maybe that could be used to help people like her who are doomed by these powers, or people who don't _want_ these abilities, or even Laurent's research -

 _I think of it more as pressure dial_ , Aro replies, his mental presence peering closer, examining. _Use to activate, sure, but also used to turn up the intensity, if you will. Most of us only have one, sometimes two if we manage to evolve our first ability. But you - I've never seen so many on one person before, nevertheless so many connected to the first ability. Telepathy, was it? Fascinating._

Bella's mind trips over itself, working to correlate this treasure trove that Aro has handed to her - working to reconcile the idea that her telepathy and telekinesis are not only two different powers, but also that telekinesis had somehow _evolved_ from the telepathy. And if Aro was right - she had no reason to doubt him, his mind was a clean, open slate - then Bella's future, what little of it remained, promised _more_ abilities, each of which had the potential to possess their own levels of efficacy -

She's glad she's seated in the back row, as nobody notices when she slumps back into her seat. _Goodness_.

 _I suppose you'll want to talk about all of this_ , Aro continues conversationally, and she gets the sense that he's been privy to _some_ portion of her mind chatter, the same way that she can't avoid surface thoughts. Aro is in her mind right now; ordinarily, he wouldn't be able to read it, but if he's still plugged in.. _. People always do. And I suspect it's what you came here to do, to talk to others like you._

She'd stumbled across the carnival, but she doesn't bother correcting him, as it's true enough that her immediate plans had changed the second she detected all those dozens of bright spots of extrahuman minds. _Yes_.

 _Come backstage after the show._

Aro pulls out of her mind quickly, the sudden snap of the connection enough to make her wince minutely. She sits in the stands, hands folded together as her mind whirs. She doesn't even pay attention to the acrobats swinging through the air or the following tiger tamer who blatantly uses his abilities in front of a hundred ordinary humans.

Bella is absolutely certain that her world has been tilted on its ear - for a second time.

* * *

 **A/N: I've never done in-text texting, like, ever – so I hope that this formatting wasn't too confusing or annoying. Just staying true to characters and Bella is plugged into technology in a serious way, so of course she's going to text. Even 100-odd years into the future.**

 **This is the point in the story that I've caught up to all the pre-written material, so there won't be any huge clumps of chapter updating. Sorry not sorry!**

 **As always, be brutally honest. I can take it.**

 **~Rae**


	18. Issue No 2:7

**7.**

 **Undisclosed Location - 2195**

Growing up in that Catholic orphanage, Edward had never been a patient boy. He thinks it was a source of great frustration to the nuns, even the nice ones who made a point to hand out hugs and proud smiles as incentive for continued good behavior. He'd been known for cutting lines, dashing off out of supervised sight, and - once he could figure it out - using his metalsense to urge clocks and bells forward. He pushed away the warm embrace of a young nun, eager to be doing something else, something _exciting_.

Always faster. Always _more_ and better. Edward wasn't satisfied with the speed of the people around him.

It wasn't something that had improved with his maturity. Edward wasn't a fine wine. He'd been sour then, and he was sour now. If anything, his impatience had gotten more bitter with age, harder to quell, harder to swallow.

It's worse now that he's got a plan that hinges upon his ability to bide his time.

Edward doesn't know where he is, but he's still learned a lot about this facility he's prisoner in - knows the schedule of drugs, of Moreau, of the passing of days once he catches the pattern of facial hair growth that peeks from behind that stupid mask. Knows that they've got problems with a generator somewhere because when people are screaming down the hall, the lights flicker enough that he can guess they're using at least a secondary source to power these labs. Knows that there are others with number-letter designations that remove the humanity from these living experiments. Knows that some of those others have died because Moreau mutters about the "failures" under his breath, loud enough that Edward can concentrate on the doctor's nasally voice between the distant burn and pinch of whatever is being done to his body at the time.

Knows that even with the cameras recording him twenty-four-seven that whoever is in charge of watching those monitors is doing a shit job of it - because Edward has been able to get away with little things for days now and nobody has said or done anything. He's not cocky enough to think he _won't_ eventually be caught, but he's also betting on Doctor Moreau being sadistic enough to dangle Edward's failure at subterfuge in front of his nose.

Edward's being subtle, at least. It'd be a losing battle to even try to avoid being medicated; he's drugged up to the gills in uppers and downers more frequently than anyone bothers to replace the IV that's keeping him alive. The drugs are a constant, the doses the same day in and day out unless his body is growing tolerant to it. The first few times this happens, Edward is recovering from one of Moreau's experiments and he doesn't realize that his dose has been adjusted until the next time he opens his eyes and it's just that much more difficult to cobble together a coherent thought.

He wizens up quickly, recognizing this inevitable interaction of medicine and biology to be his saving grace if he can just make it _work_ for him. It becomes part of the plan - for escape, for vengeance, for survival - to recognize when his drugs are about to be adjusted to keep him down like a biting dog. He pays attention to his body, to his metalsense, and forces himself to use these God-forsaken powers during that plateau. Edward does this enough, always altering only the smallest isotopes, that he can push his awareness of his body and his powers into the next adjustment.

It's like walking in inches. Smaller and less noticeable than baby steps.

Progress. Hard-won and secret, but progress that he can feel. Progress he can almost taste.

He never does anything overt. That would be bloody dim and he's clever enough to not be _obvious_. He can feel himself getting stronger, though, beneath the deluge of drugs. He can feel his power pushing through whatever block the drugs have placed as an obstacle. Move the lock a millimeter at a time and eventually that lock is going to turn.

Between all of this acclimation are more experiments - and they're only getting more fucked up, if anyone bothered to ask Edward. Which they don't.

Today, for the first time, he's wheeled into a different room and it's - degrading, for the most part, because some male orderly with more muscles than sense bodily lifts him into a hard plastic wheelchair and pushes him into a room that is made entirely of glass and polyethylene _and no metal whatsoever_. The table, the door, the walls, even the floor. There's a two-way mirror and Doctor Moreau is seated in front of a clip board, waving broadly and commanding the orderly to leave the room.

It's ruddy difficult to not let the confusion show on his face. Edward manages, just barely, eyes locked onto the odd assortment of items spread out on the table that he has been wheeled too. The drugs aren't fresh in his system, only three hours since injection, so the only control he has over his body is the movement of his eyes, a flick of a finger, the involuntary jerk of his head toward sound.

 _They put a lot of thought into this_ , he thinks, equal parts disgruntled and amazed that they have realized the exact scope of his power. Only a room completely devoid of metal could keep him locked in. He just doesn't know what the angle is, here. Usually, Moreau was pleased as gin and punch to hack into Edward's body like a butcher but that blasted case isn't in sight.

Just - a petri dish partially filled with what he's pretty sure is blood, magnets, a paperclip, and a ball of static electricity hovering over a glass ball.

Edward lifts his eyes. Doctor Moreau is standing in the doorway separating the observation deck from the room. His eyes crinkle at the sides, another smile. "Welcome to stage two, TH-30. I'm very excited for today. We've been building up to this test from day one! And if you succeed, there are rewards. I'm told you used to be a fan of rye whiskey?"

Edward doesn't answer. He wouldn't, even if he could speak.

He blinks.

"All you need to do is follow directions, TH-30," Doctor Moreau says as he circles Edward's wheelchair, placing electrodes at his pulse points, his temples, directly over his heart and the bony curve of his spine. "We have allowed your next dosage to lapse, so you'll be able to access your powers in a few moments, I'm sure. Exciting, isn't it? Perform adequately and you'll be rewarded."

Moreau wanders back to the observation room and taps something on the desk - a moment later, a brilliant shock races over Edward's skin, licking at his nerve endings with fire. His heart jumps, eyes wide as Moreau smiles behind the glass. "Just checking that it was working! You may begin whenever you feel ready!"

Edward isn't patient.

But now isn't the time for escape.

He has to tell himself this over and over again because Moreau is a trigger-happy son of a bitch and presses the button to shock Edward with electricity more than is strictly necessary. He shocks Edward every few minutes while Edward waits for his powers to come back online. He shocks Edward twice when he does well - dividing the iron from the blood in the petri dish, changing the shape of the paper clip, drawing the magnets to the metal joints of his exposed knuckles - and holds that button down, shocking Edward for several long moments until he almost blacks out, when Edward fails to draw the static on the glass ball to himself.

Edward has _never_ been able to control static electricity.

He's not sure why they think he can - and he's even less sure of why they think making him piss his pants from too much electro therapy is going to help.

He doesn't wonder for very long.

"You have oddly low pain tolerance, TH-30," Moreau tsks, shaking his head in disapproval as he hold taptaptaps on the button.

Electricity zips up Edward's spine. The room spins, his heart races, and he tastes metal on his tongue from where he'd bitten down. His head lolls backward, eyes fluttering in the moments of recovery that prove to be all-too-brief.

"We'll need to fix that."

They do.

Edward is shocked so much in such a short span of time that his nerves are fried - and this time, Doctor Moreau does not bless him with any type of recovery break, instead injecting him with a drug that feels like acid clawing at his veins and shocking him some more, turning up the dial until his throat is raw from the screaming.

He understands why they need that second generator.

Edward doesn't know how many times he blacks out from the pain, only to come to with a needle slipping into his arm and Moreau's shit-brown eyes studying him, but eventually he doesn't so much as twitch when the electricity is pushed to the maximum setting and administered for five, ten, fifteen minutes. There is no relief, no break, no opportunity to lash back. Edward wouldn't be able to take that opportunity even if it were presented to him - he's lost all feeling in his body as far as he can tell, let alone being able to find his metalsense and shove those magnets right through Moreau's body.

His escape plan has never felt more like a fantasy.

What's happening to him in this place is - he's beginning to compartmentalize it all, boxing it into far-off stretches of his mind. But he's changing, probably in ways that they want him to but also in ways that he won't understand for a very long time.

Doctor Moreau claps. "Very well done, TH-30. You're responding very well to the catalyst enzyme. I designed it myself, you know. See, we give it to the experiments then expose them to the type of power we want them to adopt with the stress testing to bond the drug to the adrenal gland. You're one of the few successes!"

Edward is silent.

"It's too soon, of course, to see whether or not you've gained a new ability - wouldn't electricity be exciting to have - but we'll be able to see in a few days. Don't disappoint me, TH-30."

Moreau presses the button again.

Edward doesn't even blink at the crackle or the accompanying pain.

He can't feel anything.

* * *

 **A/N: Edward still has a bit further to go with Doctor Moreau and this facility – but you'll just have to read to find out!**

 **As always, be brutally honest. I can take it.**

 **~Rae**


	19. Issue No 2:8

**8.**

 **Poughkeepsie, New York - 2195**

The carnival does not travel on Sundays. This seems to be the one of two hard-and-fast rules that the entire contingent of special people adhere to; the carnival does not travel on Sundays and the carnies do not pretend to be something that they are not. Ever.

Bella is skeptical of the wisdom in this second unspoken rule. Is it wise, she wonders, to not even work at concealing these gifts? Is it not obvious to the normal humans that there is something _extranormal_ about the talents they see at the carnival?

The easiest answer is also the most honest and it comes straight from the mouth of Aro as he leads her through the darkened carnival after hours, thin strands of yellowish lights strung between tents and caravans the only source by which to see aside from the bright shine of the moon and stars. His tour leaves very little to be desired; he does not rush her, he does not divert from the goal, and he is exceptionally thorough, free with his mind, his words, and the people who he calls his own.

Bella had never imagined there could be so very many mutations. Theoretically, it was all possible; somehow, the science would work itself out if Aro's estimation of where the extrahuman _switch_ in the brain was correct, which she doesn't doubt for a moment. It was an incredible theory, this idea that all of the extrahuman mutations are not only genetically traceable but also predetermined by an unspecified set of data hidden between a cluster of hyperactive neurons. If Bella could tap into that, if she could understand _how_ the genes were activated, would she be able to do anything to delay the progression of her own astrocytomas? Could she develop a drug to halt their growth, to keep them from pressing against those fire-cracker brain cells right above the amygdala?

She isn't sure. Even if she were back at Columbia's underground labs, there wasn't any guarantee that the research would sort itself out before her last grain of sand hit the bottom of the hourglass of her life. She was obligated to pass that information on to Laurent, however; he might be able to do _something_ with a tentatively confirmed theory based on mutation progression. He would have the time to, at the very least.

"We have no need to hide," Aro declares boldly. "People see what they want to see. Fanny tames beasts with teeth the size of your head because she can speak to them, but nobody would think twice about it because she's a _tamer_ and this is a circus."

"Yes, I understand the appeal of hiding in plain sight," Bella murmurs. "But surely it draws some untoward attention. The news is…"

"Sensationalizing. I agree." Aro nods, then ducks around a half-way dismantled tent, leading Bella away from the lingering carnies working at their station and back to the half-circle of caravans lining the edge of the forest. "And yet, there are no reporters looking our way. Why should they? It wouldn't even cross their minds that our carnival is anything but human because it's been around since the Third War."

Bella's steps falter, mind jumping to the obvious conclusion that this confident, moderately arrogant man has set up. "But not before?" she wonders, mouth moving without her consent.

Aro's unfathomably dark eyes crinkle at the corner as he smiles beneath his trimmed beard. "I always forget how prone youth are to believing that they are the pioneers, the originals."

The non-answer is enough confirmation that Bella feels the need to sit down.

She'll have to tell Laurent that - well, that it's completely possible that the Third War is the cause for the mutations, or at least part of the cause. Although, Bella can't imagine _how_ the bloodiest war in human history, the war that involved nearly every nation on Earth and resulted in a globalized peace that has been, up to this point, perfectly stable…She can't imagine how _that_ war would be at all involved in the mutations that are developing right at this very moment. Surely the Great Flare was the cause; and yet, Aro seems to disagree without explicitly explaining _why_.

Bella will have to think on this notion, examine it from every angle. She already knows it is a possibility that will keep her up at night - wondering how the Third War has led to her impending demise. Egocentric or not, it was the human inclination to make issues personal and Bella was not blind to that tendency.

"Now," Aro says conversationally, easily cutting through the slightly maudlin tone of her thoughts, his mind alight with a mischievous echo that puts her on edge. He stops at the door of a middle caravan, knocking on a door that is partially opened and pushing against the wood, inviting Bella inside. "You've met most everyone in the carnival except for our youngest recruits. I hope you're not the easily startled type."

"Why is that?" she asks, peering at the chaos inside the trailer. Clothes are strewn about, several of them in gaudy shades and made of spandex; magazines geared toward teenagers litter the flimsy tabled surrounded by vinyl seating; a half-eaten apple rolls across the floor, still in motion. Bella's brows furrow. There is nobody in the trailer, no source for the movement of the apple as it stops against her foot.

Until, quite suddenly, there are _two_ people standing in the middle of the trailer, arms wrapped around each other's faces, wide identical grins stretching their lips. A boy and a girl that Bella recognizes from the performance earlier - twins, in fact, with sun-bleached hair, tawny skin, and green eyes that are only a shade apart, each slender with youthful limbs and bare feet.

Bella startles at their appearance. Aro laughs, a grand booming sound that fills up the tiny space. And the twins laugh, too, turning grins on each other.

"Always fun," says the girl.

"Very entertaining," answers the boy.

"A surprise!"

"A wonder!"

"A bombshell, to be sure!"

"Astonishing!"

"Astounding!"

"Annoying," Aro interjects with good nature. He scratches his chin, looking down at Bella, tilting his head at the still-giggling twins. "You want to take a guess?"

Bella doesn't _need_ to guess. The twins have minds that are completely open, cavernous spaces that would otherwise be a breeze to read if only those caverns were not interrupted by stalagmites - distortions where memories feel older or more recent, warped by a sense of distance that is inconsistent. She might have been hooked by that mystery if the answer weren't so apparent on the surface thoughts that bridge the gap between the minds of the twins - minds that are similar, but so distinct and also so intertwined that she is hard-pressed to separate them. Their thoughts are synchronized, buzzing with the excitement of the reveal.

She gasps, then gapes. While physics had never been the focus of her education, she knew enough about it that the twins - who regularly broke all laws of physics - simply did the impossible. And here Bella thought that Jessica's ability to heal by touch was remarkable. "Time and space," she intones, still colored by disbelief.

"Anytime," says the boy, Alec.

Half a beat later, his sister, Jane, winks and adds, "Anywhere."

"Nowhere at all," they say in unison. "But now we're here!"

The pun isn't lost on Bella, her lips twitching upward. Nowhere - now here - here and now - time and space. Clever. And they are clever teenagers, barely fifteen and high school drop outs, but astute in their own ways - ways that Bella has never been smart, actually. Almost beyond her control, she skims through their most prominent memories, absorbing the twins through the ages and the constant feats of physical prowess that have marked the majority of their lives. She knows that they're runaways, refugees like everyone else in the carnival.

Is she a refugee, too? A refugee from her illness? From her mutation? From her life?

"And now Bella is here," says Aro, casting a wry smile in her direction. "I was wondering if you could put her up for the night?"

Bella shakes her head. "No, I couldn't. I have a hotel room -"

Aro levels her with those dark eyes. _I insist_ , says his mind, followed quickly by a sense of wisdom that is unrivaled by any mind Bella has encountered.

And because she can't - won't - argue against wisdom, Bella nods, albeit reluctantly. "If you insist."

"Great!" says Aro, turning on his heel, moseying casually out of the trailer. "Dinner in a half-hour. Make sure you have thought of an attraction for Bella to feature. She's a telepath."

"Wait!" she says to his back, mentally adding, _I never said I was going to stay and join you!_

 _Didn't you? Everyone wants to join the circus_ , Aro replies before firmly shielding his mind from her access, much to her chagrin. She wants Aro to return. His presence was familiar to her in the sense that older people had always been more relatable, as far as she was concerned; she'd never cared overmuch about her age mates. And now Bella is left alone with two people within her age group and feels more unnerved than she can ever recall.

She is not unnerved by much - logic and rationality buffer away so many uncertainties, even when she is in doubt, that the feeling is decidedly foreign. Bella Swan, the seventeen year old heiress to a multibillion dollar conglomeration and dying of multiple brain tumors, is unnerved. She does not like the feeling.

With a sigh, she looks back to the twins, meeting the impish glints in their eyes with all the stoicism her father had taught her, intent on following the volley of their back-and-forth speaking. Like their voices, their minds follow the same catch-and-return pattern - so seamless, in fact, that Bella wonders if they aren't actually connected telepathically.

They aren't. Alec and Jane are simply _that_ close. Bella can't even fathom being so closely connected to another person. Their shared memories, the landscapes of their minds, suddenly become all the more extraordinary.

"Oh, _telepathy_."

"Think of the possibilities!"

" _Guess My Weight,_ " suggests Jane.

" _Guess My Age_ ," counters Alec.

" _Guess Where I'm From."_

"A lot of guessing."

"Too much guess-work."

Alec tilts his head at Bella, inquisitive and bright-eyed. "It's not really guessing, though, is it? Hey, what am I thinking, mind-reader?"

 _Nothing I'll saying out loud_ , she projects to him, careful to modulate the volume of her mental voice so that she doesn't traumatize his mind. Aside from Aro, she's never thought to communicate telepathically - she's not even sure it will work with a non-telepath like the twins - but Alec gets the message loud and clear because he breaks out into a wide grin.

"Oh, that is _wicked_ cool!"

Jane mirrors the grin. "Wait until Wendy gets ahold of you, girl."

"Wendy might be bothered at how similar their gifts are…"

Jane shakes her head, bopping her brother on the back of the head. "Clairsentience isn't the same thing as telepathy."

"Tell that to the norms!"

The twins laugh, complete within each other, already moving on to a new rapid conversation that acts as background noise as Bella is gripped by her own ponderings. If either mind her silence, they say nothing, tactfully allowing her the opportunity to gather herself. Perhaps recognizing that, like them, Bella's arrival to Sparks Extraordinary Carnival was not planned.

 _The norms_ , Bella echoes silently to herself. Such casual ease at separating themselves from the rest of humanity is baffling to her - but then, she knows just how similar the extrahumans are to their completely normal counterparts. One single gene mutation is the only difference between the carnies and the rest of the world. The difference between Bella and Laurent. The difference between Jessica and her children.

A single mutation linked to a singularity - the Great Flare, say some, but Aro thinks otherwise and Bella can't honestly decide. There isn't enough evidence, yet. But she doesn't have to make up her mind, does she? She won't be around to see those questions answered and so she takes a moment, a breath, and shoves the scientific curiosity into the deep recesses of her mind.

Bella is being offered a choice.

She left New York because she wanted to _live_ while she still could and part of that was experiencing new things. If she wanted to suss out the riddles of the universe, she could have stayed at Columbia and withered away in her laboratory. But she chose differently and that choice has now led to another one. Should she stay and keep experiencing new things, become part of a carnival circuit, or shall she go, return to the life she knew and wait for her last breath?

The choice is obvious.

* * *

 **A/N: I like the twins. I might even love them. And a new emerging theory on the mutations. What's your take? Is it the Great Flare? Is it the Third War?**

 **As always, be brutally honest. I can take it.**

 **~Rae**


	20. Issue No 2:9

**9.**

 **Undisclosed Location - 2195**

Edward suppresses a grim smile. _Sodding wankers have let me out of the cage_ , he thinks savagely, holding his body still and upright as he waits for the orderly to lock the door of Edward's personal hell. It's all very procedural - he supposes that it has to be.

He's not free, of course, and precautions have been taken; his wrists are locked together by reinforced plastic, as are the weights on his ankles that cause him to shuffle instead of walk, and the orderly is bereft of all metals, followed closely by a guard armed only with a glass baton slipped through the loop of his cloth holster. Moreau and company aren't complete idiots. They know better than to give Edward the opportunity.

They learned that the hard way a few days ago. The first time Edward had been let out of the cage, there hadn't been a guard and the orderly had been wearing a wedding ring; with all they've been doing to Edward, it took less than a thought, less than a second, to take that metal and shape it right around the throat of the orderly. He might have done further damage than a broken windpipe if another nurse hadn't walked by and begun shouting for guards, who in turn tranquilized Edward with a well-placed plastic dart to the thigh.

Moreau hadn't been best pleased, so Edward is somewhat intrigued that they're trying again so soon after the last attempt. Not that he minds, exactly. Even though his legs are shaking with the effort and he's clenched his jaw so tight his teeth grind together to hide his struggle, it's thrilling to be walking under his own power, stretching muscles that hadn't been used in ages. Looking down at himself, his spindly frame is grotesque, weighed down by metal that he can barely sense. They've upped the dosage of whatever drug suppresses his power, but Edward knows it won't last for long; his tolerance to the drug builds up rapidly because of how much effort he's put into resisting it.

He'll play docile for now as he waits for his body to acclimate - his curiosity will have to be enough to keep him sane and complacent. Quite a bet to hedge.

"Let's go," says the orderly to the guard, who in turn grasps the glass baton and jabs Edward in the spine to inspire movement.

Edward shuffles along, careful to keep his observations masked by a façade of weariness. He can be a good actor. Handy survival skill aside, though, Edward quickly becomes confused by the layout of the laboratory and as he is led around endless corners, he begins to suspect that the orderly has been instructed to confuse the route to wherever it is he is being led. Clever. Not clever enough, though, because Edward soon begins to notice little landmarks - scuffs on the floors, chipped paint on the walls, a slightly different tile on the ceiling, all things that have been overlooked by anyone who doesn't want to escape this hellhole.

Edward wants to escape. He wants to raze it to the ground. He takes note of details overlooked, not sure of how that will help him but certain that those details are important. Eventually, the orderly takes a turn down a hallway that Edward hasn't seen before - marked by a cracked white tile near the left baseboard - and they walk down a long straight stretch, doorless walls on each side until the very end. Edward instantly takes note of the _metal_ door and keypad, but numbed as he is he's dumb to do anything but watch as the orderly types in a code and the door hisses as it unlocks, sliding open.

 _I'll remember this,_ he decides, keeping his chin tilted to the floor, playing the part he's been given. _This is a door I can use._

The inside isn't what he expected; instead of another plain room ready to observe Edward as he's methodically tortured by electric shocks and forced to separate iron from blood in lab rats, the room is clearly some sort of lounge. A different test is going to happen here, he just knows it. In the room, there is only one other person, a young woman a few years older than himself with a shock of close-cropped hair and Eastern European bone structure. As he is led to sit on the couch opposite hers, he watches the slow revolution of color that takes place; her pale skin tans, freckles, deepens to midnight and then reverses; her hair fades into every color on the spectrum, from platinum to midnight; and her eyes slowly shift from icy blue to green to hazel to the darkest brown. All of the changes are so stunted, slow and sluggish in a way that reminds Edward of his own halting abilities.

She's drugged, just like him. Not much of a surprise considering their matching nondescript hospital gowns or the gauntness of their faces. Part of him is interested to see another lab rat in this place - but the part of him that has learned Moreau's patterns is leery of this new development. His nerves spasm in phantom pain, as if his body can tell that he will be biting back screams at any moment.

The girl doesn't make eye contact, but she shudders as his shackles are removed - and Edward knows that he's right. Something heinous is about to take place.

The guard and orderly leave for a moment before a new orderly pushes a large, heavy, and _downright strange_ device through the open doorway. Edward can't make heads or tails of what it's supposed to be other than sodding ugly, but he's sure it's nothing good. The orderly wheels the machine to the side of the room, placing it in the exact middle between him and the girl so that a triangle is formed. Then, they are hooked up to whatever it is and Edward starts to recognize parts of the machine - namely, those rudding electrodes that attach to his skin.

The girl flinches as the same is done to her, eyes lifting to his for a spare moment - grey and wide. She's scared. It doesn't affect Edward at all, her fear. He's too busy mitigating his own dread to worry about hers and maybe that's a little less than human, but Edward hasn't ever been _only_ human, has he? He's always been something else. Moreau had beaten the rest of the human out of Edward and he doesn't know what it is that is left - but he wants to find out.

Edward is patient as the orderly continues the set up, administering a familiar syringe to both Edward and the girl. The return of his metalsense is less jarring than it has been in the past - he might have been able to beat this new dosage by himself, a fact that he plans to keep hidden. Edward keeps a tight lid on his power, though; the girl does, too, finally settling into a frosty blonde and light green eye, skin fair and prickled with gooseflesh. She doesn't have the scars that he does on her skin and he wonders if that's because her power prevents it.

Not that it matters.

The orderly moves to stand by the machine as the doors slide open once again, this time admitting Doctor Moreau, who greets them jovially. "Ah, TH-30, I would like you to meet my second favorite subject, 5L0-N3. It's amazing how different your abilities can be. Makes me wonder to the full range that is possible. Do you think that mindreading is real? I do. I so long to find a telepath," he says, pondering to himself for a moment before clapping his hands together. "Anyway, today is quite the treat. You see, both of you have hit a wall in your progression and I can't have that impacting my results, so we're doing something different today.,."

Edward isn't impressed with his task and by the looks of it, neither is 5L0-N3. As Moreau explains, they have already been injected with the counterdrug to free their abilities and for each time they fail to complete their task, they will be "encouraged" with he electroshock and the administration of a different drug that is meant to boost the response of the amygdala, which is where Moreau thinks access to their powers thrive. Edward could care less about all of that because his challenge is asking him to do something that he just _won't_ \- and he gets the sense that 5L0-N3's challenge is something that she simply _can't_.

The wall that Edward hit in his "progression" is this: the last time he was hooked up like this, he was asked to pull the iron straight from the body of a little white mouse. It had been too easy. The mouse had died in a second and Edward had swallowed bile, staring at it with a churn in his mind as something _broke_ inside of him. He'd just killed something and he'd done it to avoid that zap of electricity streaming through his cells. Even with all of his violence in life, he'd never been a bloody sadist - it had never been his sin to murder, to enjoy the suffering of others, and this place had taken that from him, too. Edward thought that he'd at least have that.

He lost that part of himself and Moreau rejoiced. And then they brought in the cat.

"Again," Moreau had said, glee in his voice. "It's more difficult simply because of the volume, but I don't think this should be any challenge."

Edward had looked at the cat - a tabby that shivered under his deadened stare - and he refused. He wouldn't do it. Not again. He chose to suffer and he did. The electroshocks made him black out and when he woke, Moreau was standing over him, tip of his shoe in a puddle of Edward's urine, holding the cat by the scruff of its neck.

"You disappoint me, TH-30," he said right before he snapped the cat's neck and dropped the body onto Edward's quaking body.

And now, he's been asked to do the same thing to 5L0-N3.

His task is to kill her.

And her task is to stop him by keeping all of her blood in her body at a cellular level.

Moreau leaves with a grin and a skip in his step, the door sliding shut behind him and leaving Edward and the girl to stare at each other. Edward doesn't know what he's going to do. Refusing will only get him so far; eventually, the pain of the electroshock is going to make him snap and he'll do exactly what Moreau wants. He could crush the device, but there was always another one, a worse one, behind some door in this place.

They are silent as they wait for Moreau to begin, the machine humming and the wall behind it fading from opaqueness to reveal the observation room beyond. Edward takes a deep breath, curling his fingers into his palm as he ignores Moreau's first instruction; the electroshock that follows is stronger than anything he's felt in his life and he can't tell if the screaming he hears is his own or 5L0-N3's. Both, probably.

"Don't disappoint me, TH-30."

Edward grits his teeth, absorbing the next shock with a rattle in his chest.

And so it continues - for how long, Edward doesn't know. He loses consciousness several times, as does the girl on the other couch. The acrid scent of vomit and urine fills the room and Edward knows he can stop this at any time, but he won't. _He won't kill_. It's not worth surviving if he loses his soul along the way.

Moreau's frustration is palpable and that makes him sloppy. Between one bout of recovery, the doctor left the microphone of the observation room on and Edward hears something that will change his life forever.

 _"Sensors detect a solar flare in less than-"_

 _"I don't care!"_

 _"But sir, if the flare and-"_

 _"Leave!"_

Edward latches onto this with all that is left in him. He recognizes the opportunity for what it is and the chance is so slim, so up to chance and timing that it's almost impossible - but it's the kind of opportunity that won't come around again.

He's grown up with solar flares. There's only so much technology can do to endure the interaction of solar winds, which means that there will be a handful of seconds where electricity flickers all over the world - a few moments where there will be nothing. He's willing to bet that this lab isn't up to the standard required to keep that kind of thing banked. This lab is going to go dark - soon.

Edward raises his eyes, unlocking his jaw. "It's going to hurt," he tells 5L0-N3, watching as alarm races over her expression. "But I'm not going to kill you."

He doesn't give her a chance to respond - instead, his metalsense arches out, grasping onto the rich iron he can sense running through her veins. Very carefully, he pulls on it, just enough to stretch and break capillaries, just enough for her to cry out in pain.

"Very good, TH-30!"

Edward ignores Moreau, training his eyes on the lights overhead and keeping his draw on 5L0-N3's iron steady. All he needs is a flicker and then he'll know it's time.

The lights dim for a heartbeat and Edward releases the girl's blood - the response from Moreau is instantaneous and electricity pumps into Edward's body for terrible long moments -

And then the lab goes dark - but the electroshock changes, burns through all of his cells, and he might scream, might bloody his throat from the volume, but it doesn't matter. He'd calculated wrong. _Something_ _had gone wrong_. The pain was supposed to stop. The darkness was supposed to give him a chance to crush the machine, cripple all of the metal around him so he could escape.

But that isn't what's happening.

It will take him months to learn what really happens, which is this: there was a compounding variable between Edward's natural ability, the electroshock, and the solar flare and it all culminated into a situation where Edward's nerves were kept open at the exact moment solar radiation washed over him. And that changed him, really changed him.

 _Evolved_ , is what he'll be told by another girl.

 _Evolution is bloody bullocks_ , is what he'll tell her.

It's pain beyond pain. He can't even properly describe it. He only knows that it lasts forever and that he can feel something _new_ in him when it is over. The electricity pumping into his body from the electrodes finally stops, but he can still feel it, like he's alight with static. And he doesn't hurt. One second agony and the next he's blissfully, energetic, fully charged. He feels alive.

The laboratory lights flicker on and then it's like white noise. Edward's not even thinking - he's reacting, standing and throwing his hands to the side, fingers splayed wide as electricity crackles in his hands, moving over his skin and burning the electrodes right off his body. Edward is thrumming, full of vitality.

He laughs. Easy as breathing, he melts all the metal around him until it pools beneath his bare feet.

"TH-30…" Moreau cautions.

He snarls in response, stalking forward to pound his metal-coated knuckles against the glass that the doctor is hiding behind. It cracks beneath the force, shattering onto the ground, and he grins with all of his teeth, reaching forward to pull the mask off Moreau's face. He takes in the appearance of his captor, of his personal devil, and then presses his palm still crackling with electricity against Moreau's chest. "That's not my name," he says right before he unleashes a jolt of bright blue electric currents that drop Moreau to the floor. He enjoys watching the doctor's eyes roll into the back of his head with an unholy amount of glee.

Edward spits on Moreau.

"Take me with you," he hears behind him, a female voice of strongly accented Russian.

That's not part of the plan - but none of this, whatever is happening with him, is part of the plan, either. So Edward nods and leads the way, using the brute force of his metalsense and this new gift to cut down everything and everyone in his path. He's untouchable, unstoppable. He doesn't kill, but he's not gentle as he makes his way through the laboratory, leaving only destruction in his wake.

There are three others that he finds, three experiments that he sets free and of them only 5L0-N3 remains at his side and she's the one who finds the utility closet, jerry-rigging cleaning chemicals into explosives with an impressive competence, jaw set in determination.

He frees them and she makes sure that it stays that way.

They smell like smoke for days.

* * *

 **A/N: Yep! I'm betting that nobody can guess who 5L0-N3 is supposed to be (though she's obviously modeled after Mystique) but just remember that I play a long game, okay! And you'll like who it is. Probably.**

 **As always, be brutally honest. I can take it.**

 **~Rae**


	21. Issue No 2:10

**2.10**

 **Naugatuck, Connecticut - 2195**

"Can you fix it?"

"I think so," Bella grunts, twisting the wrench with grease-smeared fingers, her wrists caught between copper wire deep within the belly on the engine that runs the Ferris wheel. It is very early in the morning, the sun barely cresting the horizon and frost still coating the ground, clinging to her knees where she is kneeling. Over her shoulder, Quil holds his open palm facing downward on the mechanics she is trying to repair as quickly as possible, the muted glow of his skin providing enough clearance for her to see. "When does it have to be running?"

"Definitely by tonight," Quil replies, worry awash in his voice. "Why? Do you need a part or something? We can send Seth into town…"

Bella does need a part, actually, but she can tell just from looking that no local mechanic is going to have the piece she needs to actually repair the engine properly. They'll have to place an order from a supplier of vintage parts, which she's sure Aro will be absolutely thrilled to hear, but for now there's little else she can do except patch it up. It's a very old engine for a very beloved ride and she doesn't want to risk damaging it further by allowing Quil to run it as it is.

"I can keep it running, but it's only a temporary fix," she says over her shoulder, wiggling her arms and upper torso free. Quil hastily backs up a step, snuffing the light from his palm and handing her a red flannel rag that does very little to effectively clean her hands. Bella takes a moment to catch her breath, head rushing from being bent over for so long. When the dizziness fades, she rummages for the broken part she'd removed an hour earlier, frowning at it in consternation.

 _We need to order a Bonfilioli 321-L4,_ she says to Aro, reaching directly to his mind and showing an image of the damaged part. _The gear transmission on the wheel is shot._

 _Can't repair it?_

 _Temporarily_.

She senses Aro's understanding and pulls away from his mind, smoother than she has in the past. He's been working with her on her powers, the same way he does for everyone in his carnival. Bella's main issue is trusting that she won't hurt anyone; no matter what the others say, she's convinced that telepathy is offensively invasive, possibly even potentially damaging if she isn't as gentle as possible. Her mind can be a battering ram, full of information and ambition, and she hesitates to expose anyone to that unnecessarily.

But she's getting better. Limiting her access with self-imposed limits is the happiest compromise she can manage, even if most people - Aro, the twins, Wendy - have assured her that they don't find it intrusive. Bella has never been prone to drawing attention to herself, though, and she can't think of anything more attention-getting than having a presence in a mind that is not her own. Two weeks with the Sparks carnies isn't going to change her mind.

"Aro is placing the order right now," she says to Quil, closing the bubble firmly around her thoughts.

"And until then?"

She sighs at the hazy anticipation in his tone, feeling the heft of the gear transmission in her hands. "Until then, I'm going to try and patch this crack here and here and put it back in. But you'll need to limit how long you run the wheel, Quil. Any longer than a few hours and there's nothing I'll be able to do until the part gets here."

He makes a face, richly tanned skin wrinkling around the nose and mouth, and then nods his acceptance. "Alright, fine. Got it. I'll keep it limited to the rush hour," he says, referring mostly to the hours around and just after sun set, which is the most popular time for the wheel to attract riders. There's something romantic about being so far off the ground, so much closer to stars, and near loved ones.

Bella would know; she hears the thoughts every night. She's still too overwhelmed by the sheer volume of minds presented by a crowd that her perfect shielding in the day becomes decidedly imperfect at night. There isn't much to be done about that except to practice more, work harder, and keep her pills at hand for the inevitable ache that follows after so much exposure and resistance.

Quil lumbers off to finish his daily inspection of the Ferris wheel, double-checking each bolt and cart with special attention to detail. He's spooked by the damage to the gear transmission and he should be - it's such an essential part that might mean rebuilding the entire engine if the same model that's broken isn't available. And if one part on an old machine is broken, chances are that other parts are heading in the same direction. Not that Bella had seen any indication of that, but she's not actually an engineer and it's entirely possible that she might have overlooked something vital.

Her father's dedication to impeccable integrity would dictate that Bella advise Quil to stop the wheel until further notice. Four months ago, she would have agreed with him. As a scientist, she could see the writing on the wall as clear as day, but riding with the Sparks Carnival has taught her that Bella has to be more than a scientist. It's hard. She's thought of herself in terms of logic and rationale for so long that she's still bewildered by the inclination the carnies have to take chances. They aren't safe or cautious; and since she knows she cannot stop Quil from the risk of keeping the ride going, her only remaining option is to do her best to make sure that the wheel is safe.

Besides - and it is such a shameful thing - she _enjoys_ being needed in this place. Others depend on her tacit knowledge for all sorts of tasks. Bella hasn't been depended on in such a long time. Everyone in her life is perfectly capable of functioning without her, even Laurent, who continues to fret and expend energy on researching for _her_.

It's so selfish to want this responsibility - to want to be relied upon. Selfish and shameful and she cannot stop herself from grasping at it, even as logic tells her that it is a fruitless desire. She will die, maybe in a week or maybe in a year, and when she is gone, nobody will be dependent on her. What is the point of _wanting_ this so much? Human connection? Irrational. What she should do is leave the carnival and go on as she had before, impacting as few lives as possible to lessen the blow of her death when it inevitably comes.

She doesn't do that, though. Instead, she settles down with her back against the engine and her legs crossed, cradling the gear transmission in her hands and reaching for her telekinesis.

Aro has all but eliminated the hair-trigger of emotions that she has associated with this ability; he has drilled her until she could call upon it at will, until she could feel sadness without anything levitating around her. Compared to telepathy, mastering telekinesis, finding a way to cap the ability, was easy as breathing. She does not delude herself, however; she may have learned a way to keep herself in check, but her control is tenuous at best when the ability is released.

Now, inhaling deep as she releases the lock-breaks on the telekinesis, the space ten square feet around her vibrates minutely, grass and rock shifting, the wheel groaning at her back. She pulls it in, brings it closer to her until she can feel the barest pressure against her skin. Closer still until the gear transmission feels lighter. It is difficult enough that her chest heaves. She exhales, concentrating on the fine fissures on the transmission, stress evidence created by a combination of prolonged pressure and aged construction. Metal is the singularly most difficult compound she has encountered with her telekinesis; it is too complex for her to do more than move, too heavy to handle for longer than a few minutes. Other things - organic elements - bend to her will with greater ease.

Right now, she is attempting the impossible. She thinks that if she can just put enough pressure on the transmission, she can force the cracks together, unbend the tension that has thrown the construct out of whack.

It takes several hours before she is satisfied and her work is imperfect, adjoined with messy welding over the cracks from assistance with Quil's power. After placing the part back where it belongs, she has formed a headache to rival the first ones that came with the astrocytomas and begs off of the vegetable stir fry one of the firebreathers had made for lunch in favor of refuge in the caravan she is sharing with the twins. They are gone when she enters the darkened space, but that isn't unusual. Jane and Alec often disappear over the course of afternoons for miniature adventures that Aro evidently approves of - so long as they are back in time for their performances, of course.

Bella is glad for their absence as she collapses onto the padded cot that has been designated as hers, head cushioned by a feathered pillow that pokes her cheek. Blind in the dark, she gropes for her bag, fishing out the rattling bottle of pain relief, one of which she dry swallows with a deep sigh. Her eyes flutter shut, waiting for her pill to kick in.

She needs more pills. What should have been a two month supply has quickly dwindled over the course of her travels and with the daily exercise she finds at the carnival. Between Aro's mandatory training and the tasks she completes to earn her keep, it seems she is always using her mutations. And the more she uses them, the more she needs a reprieve from the ache in her head. She could stop, but logic dictates that it would be futile, like taking a step back; if she's not mastering control, then she's a danger to everyone around her. More of a danger, perhaps, than anyone could predict.

She hasn't told anyone about her health - about what her future holds. Wendy probably knows and Aro likely senses it, but Bella doesn't plan to disclose it. She doesn't plan to stay here forever, either, and she figures that by the time her health is too compromised for travel, she'll be back in Manhattan with a team of private doctors. She's already had Laurent make the arrangements, holding physicians on retainer for her return.

 _I shouldn't get attached to these people_ , she thinks as she shoots off a message to Laurent, requesting a refill of her pills to be sent to their next stop in Connecticut.

He doesn't respond immediately, but when he does, she bolts up from the cot, brow furrowed at the video he has attached. It's a BBC news feed with footage from _Chernobyl_ of all places, showing a fire on a facility up in Ukraine that the local government didn't know about - a facility that had been burned to the ground with no discernible ignition site or accelerant and in which no less than eighteen human bodies had been found _. Human_ is emphasized by the anchor, the censure evident in the implication that it might have been extrahumans responsible for the blaze.

 _From LAURENT CHIDI (04:33PM)_

 _What's your take on this? Do you think it might have been, you know? Legitimate?_

 _To LAURENT CHIDI (04:36PM)_

 _If you're suggesting this might have been an unsanctioned research facility, you're probably right. Laws are much more lax for science divisions in Russian territories._

 _From LAURENT CHIDI (04:36PM)_

 _But you don't think it has anything to do with the ex's._

 _To LAURENT CHIDI (04:36PM)_

 _I didn't say that._

 _From LAURENT CHIDI (04:37PM)_

 _You didn't have to._

 _From LAURENT CHIDI (04:37PM)_

 _I'm monitoring the news feeds. Stay safe. Meds next week._

 _To LAURENT CHIDI (04:38PM)_

 _Thank you._

Bella flips her pad in her hand, focusing on the smooth glass beneath her palm. Her mind races. What if Laurent's suspicions were right? What if that facility _had_ been researching extrahumans - or worse, had extrahuman subjects held against their will? It's incomprehensible to Bella, whose ethics are so thoroughly ingrained that she can't even fathom the possibility of any scientist doing such a thing.

But there are reasons that documents like the Hippocratic Oath, the Code of Ethics, the Third War Scientific Treaty exist. Because scientists had done incomprehensible and reprehensible deeds in the name of science. Deeds far more shameful than her desire to be needed. Deeds too unethical to contemplate without a rush of guilt to the head. For a moment, she supposes that it might be true - after all, Ukraine was very much a firm Russian territory and the Russians had always been more eager than most to push the boundaries, especially in the sciences.

Whether it's true or not doesn't matter, though.

The reality is that there is speculation of extrahuman involvement in a violent international incident and that is information that the people around her need to be aware of. She stands, pad gripped by thin fingers still stained in dark grease, and ignoring the vertigo that snaps at her heels, she makes her way out of the caravan and across the carnival grounds, dodging last minute preparations with little pause.

Aro needs to know about this - immediately.

* * *

 **A/N: Oh boy! Okay, the next time we see Bella, things are going to be happening. Stay tuned!**

 **As always, be brutally honest. I can take it.**

 **~Rae**


	22. Issue No 2:11

**11.**

 **Kiev, Ukraine - 2195**

In the span of twenty four hours, Edward breaks an untold number of laws, not the least of which is arson, grand theft auto, assault, and crossing the borders between countries without the right procedural permits - although, for that last one, he can hardly be blamed as he was _kidnapped_ over international borders and had only discovered very recently that he was in _bloody Ukraine_.

His first clue is the fact that he can't read any of the damn road signs posted on the seldom-used highway. Edward only notices this well after he's flagged a car down off the road, never more glad that Europeans still used traditional transport. He relieves the driver of his seat, waits for his fellow escapee to slip into the passenger side, and then presses his foot to the pedal, leaving the owner of the car knocked out cold on the side of the road. Edward reckons he'd been kind in making sure the bloke wasn't in the middle of the street and primed to become road kill. He isn't sure what the girl thinks; she's silent, features still rotating every few minutes, and he figures he'd be doing the same if he wasn't orchestrating their escape.

Testing the limits of these new powers - abilities that crackle beneath his skin and fry the car radio as he quickly relearns how to drive, a fissure of anxiety bracketing his mind. He takes a deep breath, turns his focus to things that matter. He can lose his shit later if he needs to.

When the street signs dawn on him, he curses in confusion, swerving to the right side of the road - and then back to the left. "Where the hell are we?" he demands, squinting at another sign, sparks zinging off his finger tips as the metal frame of the car groans. He reigns in his temper quickly, having no intention of crushing either of them beneath the force of his ire; he hadn't been out of control since primary school and he wasn't about to start _now_.

"Ukraine," the girl answers simply.

Edward glances at her and she looks to him, skin shifting shades in a dizzying ripple. He decides to take her word for it - and if they are in sodding Ukraine, then there's only one place they can go, only one city that's big enough to get lost in to cover their trail. "Get us to Kiev," he says and the girl does.

Edward's seen shittier cities before and, really, all cities are the same. It isn't difficult to find the run-down neighborhoods or a pay-by-night motel that will take them for a handful of cash that he'd lifted from the car he'd stolen and promptly ditched in an alley. Most places ask for chip reads for payment, but Edward isn't about to put himself on the map with a rookie mistake like that. The room is cramped, with a cot instead of a bed and more grime in the bathroom than he cares to think about, but it's enough to catch his breath and scrub the soot from his face. Make a plan. Acclimate. He gives the girl the bathroom first, situating himself on the edge of the windowsill while he waits.

She doesn't take long. When she emerges, her hair has settled back into cropped white-blonde, her eyes crystalline blue and mouth supple, skin the same shade as his own. Her real name is Irina and she is the one to tell Edward that they have _changed_ \- in their abilities, yes, but for Edward the change was also in appearance.

He scowls at her when she says this, a vague gesture at his face with a twinge of disgruntlement on her brow. "What?"

"Can't match your eyes," she says by way of explanation and Edward doesn't know what to think about that until he gets in front of the mirror.

Electric blue, so bright they are almost white glowing between the frame of bleached lashes. It's not the only thing, either. He'd always been blond, but now he is _so_ blonde, like he's been plugged into an outlet. Buggering _perfect_ , really - now he'd have to figure out how to hide himself in public, something that he'd never had to worry about before and didn't relish worrying about now.

Irina appears in the mirror over his shoulder, naked skin on display save for her breasts, which are covered by the drape of long hair, still the same shade as his. Edward does a double-take, then averts his eyes. "What are you doing?" he asks brusquely.

She moves, a whisper of skin and hair and then warmth touching his shoulder. "Whatever you want me to," she says, her voice more sultry than before, a hint of rasp that hadn't been there before. Seems like she can change _everything_ about herself. "I owe you a lot."

 _So that's what this is_ , he thinks as he straightens, twisting away from both her touch and the mirror. A spark runs down his skin, snapping at Irina's lingering hand. She steps back with a frown.

"I don't need that," he says firmly. "You don't owe me anything."

"You don't want me?"

Edward clenches his jaw. Maybe - if it had been someone else or another situation, he wouldn't have hesitated. He wasn't a stranger to a quick shag every now and then, but this wasn't the time or the place. And he'd seen himself in that mirror. Beyond the obvious changes, Edward is little more than skin and bones and he's so damn _tired_ he can't think about anything other than meeting the immediate necessities. Shelter and anonymity, check. Next was food and then months of sleep to catch up. He hardly had any desire to fool around with Irina.

If he's being honest, he might not ever feel a desire for her. How could he when he wasn't sure who she was or what she looked like? He could trust her right now because they'd come from the same situation, but there was no telling how long that would last. And if he's being more honest than the trust-issue, then he has some inkling that Irina would always be a reminder of the hell of Doctor Moreau's lab. And he didn't get it up there, either.

"I don't," he says flatly. "Go put on some clothes."

Irina's eyes widen - in hurt or fear he can't tell. "I can be anything you want," she assures him quickly. "I mean, I can tell that this isn't attractive to you - some guys like this, but you're different. You like dark hair, right? And light eyes, like grey? I can do that. I can _be_ that. Please, let me try."

Her desperation strikes him, along with the reveal that she _knew_ what he liked already. A new facet of her power? Or an old one that just got more powerful in the lab? The idea that she could know that just by - apparently - a fleeting touch made him deeply uncomfortable. Like it was mind reading, an unwanted intrusion that he couldn't protect himself from and yet another scar that Moreau's lab left on his psyche. He wouldn't be over it for a long time.

His tone is cold when he speaks, fists clenched at his sides. That new electric thing spinning through his blood wants _out_ and it takes the last reserves of his power to keep it locked tight. He has no doubt that the wattage he's now packing would kill Irina in an instant if unleashed and he really doesn't want another death on his conscience. "I don't _want_ that," he snaps. "I don't need it and I don't want it. Stay out of my head, find some sodding clothes, and _wait here_. I'll be back with food."

He doesn't give Irina a chance to respond, pushing past her and out to the hallway in the space of a few seconds, slamming the door behind him so hard that the thin walls shake. Edward exhales heavily, closing his eyes until panic ebbs away from his chest and he doesn't feel his weak muscles locking up anymore. It takes a while and he knows that pushing on like this can't last for more than a few hours - the adrenaline that had kept him going until now is slipping away faster each moment.

When he gets back with a grease-lined paper sack filled with the first edible food he could find, Irina is reclined warily on the sole bed in the room, back in the clothes they'd taken from the boot of the car stolen earlier that day. She apologizes for her behavior and he accepts with disinterest.

They both know that she won't try something like that again.

Edward was being honest when he said she didn't owe him anything. If anything, they'd saved each other.

* * *

 **A/N: Been wanting to write this scene for a while. Edward has morals, everyone! He's totally fucked in the head right now, but** ** _morals_** **!**

 **As always, be brutally honest. I can take it.**

 **~Rae**


End file.
